When I studied for my Master’s degree in Food Science, one of the subjects that changed the way I see the world was chemical food safety.
It sounds dry. It wasn’t.
That was the semester I realized that food is never just food. It is also packaging. It is storage. It is transport. It is temperature. It is chemistry.
We spent weeks studying plastics — not as convenient containers, but as complex chemical systems. I learned that plastic is never “just plastic.” It is polymers, additives, plasticizers, stabilizers, antioxidants, colorants. It is migration testing, simulants, extraction limits, temperature curves, fat solubility.
After graduating, my first job was as Food Safety Responsible in the food industry. One of my core responsibilities was ensuring that every packaging material we used complied with strict regulations for food contact materials.
