Consumer and Environmental Safety: Food Packaging and Kitchenware

Learn how some kitchenware can affect your health

Food safety is highly regulated. Yet, one blind spot is the migration of molecules from contact materials in kitchenware into food. Particular attention needs to be placed on chemicals present at low doses but acting on the endocrine system over a long time.

On this course, you’ll learn about these endocrine disrupters and their potential impact on human health and the environment.

You’ll evaluate how chemicals can migrate from packaging and slowly affect our endocrine health, and how tests can check for safety. Ultimately, you’ll better understand how we can improve food safety in general.

This course is for anyone interested in potential health risks derived from food packaging and kitchenware, and in particular from chemicals migrating from packaging into food and drink.

This could include healthcare workers, parents, pregnant women, and anyone with an interest in health and food safety.

If you’re looking to expand your knowledge on this topic, you might also find of interest the following EIT Food courses on food system:

• Trust in Our Food: Understanding Food Supply Systems
• From Waste to Value: How To Tackle Food Waste
• Understanding Food Labels
• Revolutionising The Food Chain With Technology

• Food packaging, its material and the issue of migration
• What is packaging? What for?
• Chemical analyses and the issue of migration
• The detection of unwanted chemicals in our food
• Review and reflect
• Migrating chemicals: is there a health concern?
• Chemical analyses and biological analyses
• The need of statistics and epidemiology when dealing with human
• The suspected action of migrating chemicals on our hormonal health
• Review and reflect
• Biotests their use in research and for monitoring
• Biological tests and current reseach on EDC
• How is research on endocrine interference proceeding ?
• Review and reflect
• Innovations that improve the system
• The search for novel packaging materials - the bioplastics
• Who conducts research? Who pays for it?
• The position of the food industry
• Consumers, Science, Health and Society
• The ideal flow of activity to protect health and environment
• Finding an equilibrium among stakeholders
• The difficult task of the legislator and of regulatory agencies
• Final assessment and 'take home message'