Disadvantages of Vacuum Sealing Food

What is vacuum packing?

Vacuum Packing is to remove all the air in the packaging containers (usually plastic bags) and sealed. The scarcity of air is equivalent to the effect of low oxygen, so that microorganisms have no living conditions to achieve the goal of fresh fruit and no disease.

Vacuum Packing include vacuum plastic bags, aluminum foil packaging, glassware, plastic bags and vacuum packaging of composite materials, etc. The materials of vacuum packing should be selected based on the types of items to pack. For example, fresh foods like fruits and vegetables are actually live and they still need cellular respiration, while high levels of hypoxia can cause physiological diseases. Therefore, fresh fruits are seldom seen in vacuum packing.

How to select Vacuum Packing Machines

There are varieties of vacuum packaging machines, and the following factors should be considered when selecting.

a) Packaging speed. For the sake of improving production efficiency, double-chamber or multi-chamber vacuum packaging machines can be used to improve the overall production schedule.

b) Whether the packaged items need to be filled with other protective gases. In some cases, multifunctional vacuum packaging machine with inflatable device should be used.

c) Requirements for the vacuum degree of the packaged items. If the packaged items need to be preserved in a high vacuum condition, you need to choose a cavity vacuum packaging machine.

d) The requirements for the vacuum packaging machine posed by the compositions of the packaged items.

Disadvantages of Vacuum Sealing Food

(1) Limits in Food Variety

The common vacuum-packed foods in the market include pastries, staple foods, dried mushrooms, etc., but such vacuum packaging method is not suitable for all foods. Fresh agricultural products still need oxygen for respiratory metabolism during storage to maintain life, and they are not suitable for vacuum packaging. For meat products, vacuum packaging is more applied to cooked meat products rather than fresh meat. This is because during the vacuuming process of fresh meat products, as the oxygen is extracted, the myoglobin contained in the fresh meat cannot combine with oxygen to form a bright red substance, so it turns brown. This makes the fresh meat look like it has deteriorated after long-term storage, which can easily lead to a decrease in sales. Therefore, when packaging fresh meat products, modified atmosphere packaging is often used instead.

(2) Limits in Food Preservation

Vacuum Sealing Food does not necessarily mean it's absolutely safe. Bloating may occur in vacuum-sealing package, such as vacuum-packed plastic bags or canned foods. The reason for swelling up may be that the food is not completely sterilized before the vacuum sealing, and bacteria still exist. Vacuum packaging just provides a perfect anaerobic environment for them, and bacteria feed on the contents of the package and produce gas. 

If bloating does not occur, then the Vacuum Sealing Food must be safe? Not necessarily. The quality of vacuumed food is closely related to the environment. The environmental factors of food preservation include temperature, humidity, antiseptic, and gas. Among these influencing factors, temperature plays a major role. The ambient temperature and storage temperature during vacuum packaging have a certain impact on vacuum packaged food. A lower storage temperature of 2～6℃ is the best. In order to achieve a better preservation effect, an appropriate amount of preservatives can be added to the vacuumed food package.