Immediately after manufacture products begin to deteriorate due to different factors. Labels indicates both manufacturing and expiration date for helping the consumer to know whether the products are safe to be consumer. We are advised to consume the product before its expiration date so that the product does not impose a risk to health and there is a risk to consumers if consumed after that date.

Here are the signs for product deterioration.

·         Softening of fried snack foods;

·         Development of soapy or ‘cardboardy,’ tastes in snack foods;

·         Evidence of mould in snack foods.

·         Evidence of fizziness and yeasty flavours in soft drinks, popsicles, nonu;

·         Evidence of excessive cloudiness in soft drinks;

·         Evidence of settling or layering out of cloud in soft drinks and bottled water.

·         Evidence of taint, foreign odours or foreign bodies in ice-cream;

·         Evidence of melting (degradation of the gas in solid emulsion - overrun).

References:

1.      Herbert, R.A.: Microbial growth at low temperatures. In: Gould, G.W. (Ed.) Mechanism of action of food preservation procedures, p. 71. Elsevier Applied Science: London (1989)

2.      Karel, M., Water activity and food preservation. In: Principles of food science, Part II (Editors: Karel, M., Fennema, O. R., Lund, D. B.), p. 237. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1975

3.      H.-D. Belitz · W. Grosch · P. Schieberle, Food Chemistry, 4th revised and extended ed., Berlin (2009), ISBN 978-3-540-69933-0

4.      Richard Beyer, Manual on Food Packaging for Small and Medium Size Enterprises in Samoa, Apia, 2012