Artificial Nose 'Smells' When Food is About to Spoil

Does it scare you when food starts to form that foul smell after long storage? Thanks for the latest technology of Massachusetts-based company C2Sense, computer "noses" can now detect spoilage behind foods' attractive and fresh looks.    

Before humans can smell food going bad, sensors attached to the computers will act as its nose that will detect traces of a chemical called ethylene, a primary cause of food spoilage.

According to Treeangle, food spoilage can be contagious. Fruits ripen more quickly when they are exposed to great amounts of ethylene, which cannot easily be traced by sniffing. As fruits give off more ethylene, "it creates a domino effect that boosts the ripening process for other fruits nearby."

Though machines that are able to detect ethylene have existed for years, co-founder and CTO Jan Schnorr pointed that "they've generally either been too expensive or unable to accurately detect ethylene outside the lab where they'll be exposed to numerous other similar gases." As they put the sensors into work, C2Sense created affordable sensors that are also "sensitive enough to detect low level of ethylene without setting off false positives."

The production of more affordable machines that may solve the problem of spoilage is a breakthrough.

As reported by the World Health Organization, over 200 diseases are caused by unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, parasites, viruses and chemical substances; while it is also estimated that two million deaths occur every year from contaminated food or drinking water.

Additionally, WHO noted that proper food preparation can prevent most food-borne diseases that spread easily on contaminated food. 

So if the artificial noses reach a vast number of countries throughout the globe, the death figures can be reduced in the near future. But for now, Schnorr says restaurants and food banks could use the device in crates of fruit to spot ripening fruit before it spoils and spreads.  

"Upon using the device, a wholesaler could monitor crates of fruit and move those that are starting to ripen before they spread ethylene to every other crate in the warehouse, while a restaurant could be able pinpoint individual fruits before they spoil their neighbors," reports Wired.