Whether gorgeous food packaging is safe or not needs to be carefully distinguished

    Food safety includes not only the safety of food itself, but also the safety of its packaging materials. Food packaging is known as "special food additives". As the "personal clothing" of food, its safety will directly affect the quality of food. Unqualified food packaging will have adverse effects on human health in the use process, especially on the healthy development of children and adolescents.

    Green food consumption has become a trend, but it is very inconsistent with it that many green foods do not use green packaging and green printing, but use some toxic and harmful substances as packaging and printing materials.

    In early 2005, a food factory in Gansu found that the potato chips produced had a strong peculiar smell. After testing, the peculiar smell came from benzene in printing ink of food packaging bags. The test results of Gansu Quality Supervision and Inspection Center show that the measured value of benzene in the product packaging bag is 9.7 mg/, while the national standard for benzene solvents is less than 3.0 mg/, and the content of benzene in the packaging bag is more than three times the national allowable amount, which seriously exceeds the standard. Excessive benzene residue is harmful to human health. Benzene can cause chronic poisoning, mainly damage the nervous system and hematopoietic system, manifested as headache, dizziness, insomnia, persistent leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and bleeding tendency. These damages progress slowly, will not appear in the short term, and are easy to be ignored.

    Printing ink is one of the key factors for hygienic quality problems in food packaging. Many food packages are printed with colorful and exquisite patterns, but few people know that the printing ink mostly contains benzene substances harmful to human body. Some inks contain toxic heavy metal ions, and some pigments and dyes contain carcinogenic ingredients, which are harmful to human health.

    Bright colors actually contain potential safety hazards. For example, McDonald's and KFC dishes will have a colorful advertising paper. Many people will pour tomato sauce on them, or put fries or even chicken wings on them. This is actually very unsafe. No ink can directly contact food.

    Nowadays, European and American countries have forbidden the use of raw materials containing benzene and heavy metals in food packaging. The Japanese government also stipulated several years ago that benzene should not be contained in food packaging materials. Heavy metals and solvents in ink will migrate to the inside and outside of the packaging bag at the same time. If they enter the packaging contents, there will be great potential safety and health hazards. At present, most countries in the world advocate the use of environmental protection ink, alcohol-soluble ink and water-based ink, especially water-based ink as green environmental protection ink is more and more widely used.