Spotting Fakes and Spoiled Food: A Two-for-One Offer

Traditionally, the technologies used to catch counterfeit goods and those used to monitor food safety have had little in common. Anticounterfeiting relies on complex visuals – holograms, microtext, or colour-shifting inks – designed to be hard to copy. Food safety, on the other hand, focuses on detecting chemical changes that signal spoilage, like rising acidity or the release of gases.