Rhonda Crockett, age 14, of Cumberland, Md., for her question:
WHEN WAS FOOD PACKAGING FIRST USED?
Preliterate cultures used and continue to use leaves, gourds, hollowed out tree limbs, reed baskets and earthenware vessels as containers for storing and packaging food. But the birth of the modern packaging industry occurred in 1810 when an English inventor named Peter Durand took out patents on iron and tin containers, called cans, for preserving food.
Earlier, in 1746, the first package for a brand product appeared when a Briton named Dr. James sold his "Fever Powder" in a pasteboard box. A few years later Crosse & Blackwell began selling olive oil and mustard in jars.
Then significant changes took place in the merchandising of packaged products. In 1899 the National Biscuit Company introduced its successful Uneeda Biscuit package. This package is generally considered to have signaled the end of the cracker barrel, bulk merchandising procedures of the country store era. The volume and variety of self service products available to consumers started then and continues to expand today.
The basic materials of packaging today include paper, paperboard, cellophane, steel, aluminum, glass, wood, textiles and plastics. These materials are processed or fabricated into flexible, semirigid or rigid containers.
Conventional package forms today include wraps, bags, pouches, cartons, set up boxes, cans, bottles, pails, drums, barrels and bulk containers. All packages must be sealed in some way and many require an opening for dispensing the contents.
Identification is usually accomplished by direct imprinting or by an applied label.
The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, a federal law enacted in 1966, vests regulatory authority in the Food and Drug Administration, with respect to foods, drugs and cosmetics and in the Federal Trade Commission with respect to other commodities.
Today virtually all manufactured and processed goods require packaging.
The product package today must maintain the purity and freshness of its contents and must protect the contents from the outside environment. If the contents are harmful, corrosive or poisonous, the package must also protect the outside environment.
The package must identify the contents and its quality and it must facilitate distribution. The package may contribute to convenient use of its contents by special dispensing or closure features.
Today a package must be designed to attract the attention of the shopper in about one fifth of a second, which is the amount of time the average shopper surveys any particular package in a market. Surveys show that between 50 and 70 percent of buying decisions are made on impulse at the moment of selection. These conditions give manufacturers the opportunity to appeal to impulse buying by planning well designed packages.
The reported cost of packaging containers shipped in 1939 was about $2 billion. In 1947 the cost was about $5 billion. Today it is about $30 billion.