Food contact materials are materials that are intended to be in contact with food. These can be things that are quite obvious like a glass, a can for soft drinks, but also machinery in a food factory or a coffee machine.
Food contact materials can be constructed from a variety of materials like plastics, rubber, paper, coatings, metal etc. In many cases a combination is used; for example a carton box for juices can include (from the inside to the outside): plastic layer, aluminium, paper, printing and top coating.
During the contact of the food contact materials with the food, molecules can migrate from the food contact material to the food. Because of this, in many countries regulations are made to ensure food safety.
Famous quotes containing the words food, contact and/or materials:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)
“Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Our job is now clear. All Americans must be prepared to make, on a 24 hour schedule, every war weapon possible and the war factory line will use men and materials which will bring, the war effort to every man, woman, and child in America. All one hundred thirty million of us will be needed to answer the sunrise stealth of the Sabbath Day Assassins.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)