Consumers Embrace Milk Carton QR Codes, May Cut Food Waste - Slashdot
source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/06/01/2142258/consumers-embrace-milk-carton-qr-codes-may-cut-food-waste
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Consumers Embrace Milk Carton QR Codes, May Cut Food Waste
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In the early spring semester, Lau, also working with Cornell's Milk Quality Improvement Program, connected with the Cornell Dairy Bar, which sells fluid milk in addition to ice cream on campus. She wanted to assess consumer acceptance for QR code technology that may one day replace the static best-by or sell-by dates commonly found on food products. Customers had a choice: purchasing milk with printed best-by dates, or buying containers with QR codes, which when scanned by a smart phone, would display the best-by date.
In the same Cornell Dairy Bar study, Lau placed a dynamic pricing element where consumers were encouraged to purchase milk with a shorter remaining shelf life -- by offering a price discount as the best-by date approached. "During two-month study, over 60% of customers purchased the milk with the QR code, showing a considerable interest in using this new technology," Lau said. "This revealed that the use of QR codes on food products can be an innovative way to address the larger issue of food waste." Wiedmann says the technology also exists where smart milk cartons could communicate with smart refrigerators to inform a household of the need for fresh milk.
The study has been published in the Journal of Dairy Science.
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by dbialac ( 320955 ) on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @10:13PM (#62585242)
The test pool seems to have been young. My 85 year old mother can barely operate a flip phone.-
If only there was a way to print two things on a packet at once, eg. a QR code and a date.
The person who invents that technology is going to make a fortune!
Maybe somebody like Elon Musk could invent it for humanity.
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This is just really bizarre. Does the QR code just show people a video detailing the process of "just open it and smell it"? I've always thought milk expiry dates were far too conservative, mainly to protect producers from liability. I don't think this is going to solve any of that.
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At first I was all, "How can scanning a code possibly easier than just looking a date??", but then I realized most people probably don't even know what day it is and saying "the day after tomorrow" probably is better.
No, they're "too conservative" to maximize the waste - make sure supermarkets throw them away while they're still good and order some more. Just in case.
That's capitalism.
And I fail to see how QR codes will fix that.
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I take your point, but it varies greatly product to product. Milk that expires tomorrow tastes fairly bad to be while carrots, oj, and eggs routinely last 2 months after their respective dates. Bread is more like milk (tasting stale in the days before it expires, but still okay as toast). Cheese can last a long time or spoil before you even open it.
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How long milk and other dairy lasts is directly related not only to when and how it is processed but also how it is kept. I keep my refrigerator quite cold, and many things last well past any suggested dates. Leave it out on the counter overnight and all bets are off. This QR code is basically a gimmick unless they update it in real-time with data from the future embedded sensors in the packaging.
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Yeah, I'd say the biggest contributor to food waste are domestic refrigerators with crappy mechanical thermostats. The reason food generally lasts so much longer at the grocery store is because commercial refrigeration equipment is engineered to maintain a constant temperature at all times. That and also still being factory sealed, obviously.
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Instead of just looking at the date, scan a code to be able to look up the date and let us track who drinks our milk.
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>"Instead of just looking at the date, scan a code to be able to look up the date and let us track who drinks our milk."
Bingo.
There is ZERO value in REPLACING the date code with a damn QR code. If they want to ADD a QR code just to provide reference information about milk, that is fine. But replacing a date is an incredibly stupid move which is incredibly anti-consumer-friendly.
Why not just call it "e-Milk" and get the useless buzzwords maximized?
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I mean I didn't RFA, but wouldn't a printed date have the same information and use less ink than a QR code? Couldn't you offer the same discount for milk with printed dates that are closer to their best by date? I don't see how adding a smartphone in the mix adds anything to this, rather it just complicates things.
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My favorite part was how they reinvented putting items on sale to clear out stock.
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Yeah, it opens you up to more spam and malware on your phone. Pranksters will be sticking decals all over these things. Personally, I prefer human readable labels
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And it's not like we don't have text that is human readable and machine readable, if there's some part of this process that is automated. We've had that tech for decades.
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They want to replace a readable label with a QR code. How is that better? Now I need a phone
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Cornell University is on the cutting edge for training the next generation of telephone sanitizers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants and other Ark B inhabitants. You should not question their wisdom.
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Never underestimate the usefulness of a good telephone sanitizer.
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The only thing from the summary that made any logical sense was that this would reduce waste. Presumably people no longer throw out milk past it's best before. They've no idea what date that is, so they smell it and realise that it's still perfectly fine.
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I guess the idea is that it's now more inconvenient for customers to check the best-by date of the whole shelf of milk and chose the most recent carton. Intentional UI degradation.
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"Couldn't you offer the same discount for milk with printed dates that are closer to their best by date?"
Yes, they already do, and with other things like meat as well.
Like you, I'm missing the point, even more so since my flip phone doesn't do QR codes, and it rarely leaves home. What would I need a phone for on my weekly hour long run to the grocery store?
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Question: Today is the 2nd of June. If something expired on the 28th of May then how many days is it since then?
If Mr. Smartypants can't do it the math then what chance do all the dumbasses have?
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There are a LOT of milk choices, I already have to decide between Cow, Oat, Soy, Coconut, Cashew, Flax, Hemp, and Blends/Pea Protein - also unsweetened, original, chocolate, and vanilla for the plant-based options - and skim, 1%, 2%, whole, and A2 for Cow.. If I need to then scan multiple cartons with my phone (and USE MY DATA) to finalize my decision I'd be pretty annoyed.
If you have to individualize the Qcode, the cost to continue to include a human-readable date is trivial so why not both? But if you do remove the human-readable date, at least have a scanner right by the fridge so I don't have to use my own phone and data.
I do like the idea of automatic price reductions for milk nearer expiration, we go through four cartons a week here, so milk with four days to go would usually be fine.-
Functionally it's a broken study, as it depends on the consumer's confusion, as the date displayed on the QR code is the 'Best by date' which is later than the 'sell by date' most see printed other jugs. People by them thinking that those dates are the same, when they're not, eventually most will know it.
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The numbers are here:
During two-month study, over 60% of customers purchased the milk with the QR codeThey only classify it as "waste" when unable to sell expired or nearly expired milk.
Removing the human readable version means 40% of customers will purchase milk "blind", which enables selling expired or nearly expired milk to those that wouldn't knowingly purchase expired milk.
Grandma buying expired milk because it isn't labeled anymore counts as a sale, and so isn't counted as "waste"
Grandma getting sick-
Until grandma gets sick enough and dies in the hospital. They might want to rethink that strategy.
Seriously, I'm all for eliminating food waste, but this is not the way to do it.
You can do that by buying powdered milk instead. Expiration date is in years rather than weeks. It doesn't need refrigeration. It doesn't take valuable space. And it costs less to transport.
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You left out the best one for shelf life. Just buy dogs' milk.
Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk.
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How exactly is this an improvement on a best before date printed on the carton? If you run a store and people not buying the older milk is a problem there are at least three solutions:
1. Use a complicated-but-still-doesn't-require-a-damn-smartphone system of price tags to tell customers the older stuff is cheaper.
2. Leave the new stuff in the back until the old stuff is sold.
3. Stop overstocking on milk.
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Watch all the Karens unpack the milk shelf to get the new cartons out of the back row.
If you really want to reduce waste, start selling pint containers of milk again. I don't know why they stopped. I suspect that they were selling more by having people partially use half gallons and throw them out when stale.
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They do sell them, at least in the US. If your store doesn't stock em, it's likely because they don't sell. They're just not as cost efficient.
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Actually for many stores the smaller sizes of milk have the most expiry trouble, and customer demand skews heavily towards the gallon jugs. When I was ordering milk for a store several years back the pint reduced fat milk might do 40-50 units per week, the RF gallons did 2100-2400.
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I search for the milk with the furthest out expiration date and will reach to the back to get it.
I do this because I shop perhaps once every seven to ten days and don't usually use much milk but my use does vary quite a bit. I generally buy gallon jugs (which are, per ounce, quite a bit cheaper) which insures that I won't run out in a "high use 7 or 10 day period" and still have some left over -- even if I use a bit more than usual, it doesn't run out until the next shopping trip has rolled around. Sometime
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Buy either organic or lactose free milks. They both last well over a month after being opened.
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Both are an unnecessary expense (anyway, I don't see "sell by" dates on ordinary organic milk that is normally beyond that of the regular milk -- and ultra-pasteurized tastes like crap).
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Bingo! I really donâ(TM)t want my milk going off during the week due to the inconvenience that will cause. Getting up and finding breakfast is off is not fun, especially when you have young children.
One of the UK supermarkets plans to scrap use by dates in favour of a sniff test (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59928650). Well, I canâ(TM)t sniff it before I buy, and this doesnâ(TM)t give a clue if it will last two days or eight. I donâ(TM)t mind use milk past the use-by date, but I
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The study seems rather bogus - or at least the conclusions are being misleadingly used. The TFA seems to indicate that the point of the QR code's is actually to obscure the "use by" date so that people don't grab the freshest milk, leaving older milk on the store shelves. Also related to this, the food waste they're referring to is not by the end consumers... it's about the stores that have to discard expired milk. Plus when drawing their conclusions, they are seemingly ignoring the part where the QR-coded
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I just picked up some reduced price milk, easily identifiable by the obvious sale price sticker, at my store today, and I could tell at a glance that I will most likely be able to finish it before the use by date printed in human readable characters. I fail to see how a QR code would be an improvement on that.
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Maybe it wouldn't be an improvement for you.
The improvement is for the people who can't figure out how many days are in a month.
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The reality is most people are going to want the longer lasting milk, even if they're likely to use it quickly. I'm not endoring QR code use, but making it harder to check means more people are going to be lazy and just buy what is in front of them.
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Is it really that hard to just smell the milk? I have instinctively done this every time I open the milk jug my whole life. If it smells good drink it, if it smells sour pour it down the sink. Is this really a problem that we need QR codes to solve?
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In the store? Oh, sure... just start opening up the cartons and sniff them all.
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We train people to not blindly click on a link in an email but then tell them to blindly trust a QR code on a milk carton is safe.
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QR codes don't automatically do anything and Google very likely does analysis on what comes back to see if it's harmful just like they have built in protections in Chrome.
And yes, with QR code support built into phones, they're becoming far more useful. Especially in industry.
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There could be anything behind that QR code. My daughter got one of her classmates to 3D print a QR code for a rickroll, she uses it as a keychain. She get people to scan her keychain all the time, she thinks its the funniest thing.
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I'm thinking this is Cuecat 2.0. Just not quite as clumsy, given it uses your smartphone, but just as ridiculously unnecessary.
That's the thing about this. Whatever the technology used, you still need to update a human-readable price tag nearby and print a date on the milk, or you're really going to annoy your customers (at least 40%, but I have my doubts about those numbers) who don't want to pull out their damned smartphone just to see when the milk's sell-by date is.
We have all these utopian dreams of
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They want you to scan a QR code, install an app and share your information.
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I buy milk with a more recent expiration date because it lasts longer. Moving that information to a QR code won't change that. When milk gets close to it's use by it tastes weird.
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I prefer to buy milk with an upcoming expiration date. I'm pretty sure there are laws against selling stuff with recent expiration dates.
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Buy oatmilk instead. Seriously, the stuff I buy tastes like milk, is healthier for you, and it has a shelf-life of months, not weeks.
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I still prefer dairy milk; but oatmilk is the first milk substitute I can actually tolerate drinking from a glass.
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If it is, it's annoying, because I don't want to have to use my phone. But if it isn't, it's absolutely unacceptable, because I often don't have any signal inside a supermarket.
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1) human beings cannot read QR codes. Would need a smart device, just to check your darn milk, this is ridiculous. 2) QR codes are static. So this has to be linking to a website. So you also need an internet connection just to check your milk! 3) This tracks your milk usage and location when you access this information.More unneeded user tracking.
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It's not that bad [ams.org]. With a little practice, you'll be reading them like normal letters. The next step is to grab a wire and download a web page.
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It's a system Lennart Poettering can get 100% behind!
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Take your QR code and shove it right up your asshole sideways. I know what they are, and how they work, and I don't want to sit there at the store and try to scan every fucking bottle qr to figure out which one is newest via your internet database on shitty store wifi or a poor cellular signal.
What you will actually reap from this nonsense is refrigerator doors held open for significantly longer. Consumers only come in two types -- they either don't care, or they always select a carton with the latest avail
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We could stay with having date printed on or stamped in the packaging, which requires nothing other than eyeballs to read, including scanning all of the cartons quickly if you want the freshest product. Or, have a printed QR code, hope that it does not get damaged (humans can read a partial date, not sure about partial QR codes being correctly read), pull out your phone, unlock your phone, open the camera app, scan the QR code at the correct range, grant permission, and see a date, then repeat for each con
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Reading TFA -- NOT having the printed date means that the consumer can't (so easily) buy the farthest dated carton, leaving the near dated milk to be thrown out by the store because nobody will buy it. No thanks. We already buy a range of best-before dated milk because we know how much we're going to use each week, but damned if I'm going to get out my phone and scan every carton to find the appropriate ones rather than just looking back over the tops for the right dates. Maybe the right incentive to the
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Some college kids scanned QR codes on a milk carton is equivalent to consumers "embracing" a technology? More like cursing because there's no date on the carton and now they have to use an APP.
There is zero incentive for producers and retailers to reduce food waste at any point past the sale. They would prefer everyone to buy milk that's about to expire, throw out most of it, and buy more. That's why "best by" dates are intended to be misleading and you'll never change them.
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The Cornell Dairy Bar seems to be oriented towards serving single meals, not stocking up for home use for the next week, so I question that this study really tells us much about consumer preferences that's useful in most of the "real world".
If you're going to drink it in ten minutes, the date really doesn't mean all that much. If the facility is not doing their job and is putting out old milk that is already turning that will result in people either avoiding the milk product in the future, demanding a repla
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The test showed people are willing to buy older products, closer to the end of its life, if offered a discount. "Day old bread sale" type experiment. It shows absolutely nothing about whether or not people want QR codes. I bet that they switched the experiment around in the very same store, QR coded milk was most expensive, and human readable expiry date was getting cheaper the closer it was to expired, the result would be more people buying human readable labeled product.
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Now people will need a smartphone to know if food is safe to eat. I'll complain less if there's *also* a date printed on the carton -- I won't be scanning (potentially faked) QR codes at the store.
Don't get me started on how dumb "smart" / Internet connected (surveillance) appliances are in the home...
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Why not also put the recycling code into the QR code too.
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Why doesn't the U.S. just switch to the bag-in-boxes which other countries use? That way they're shelf stable until you open them.
Also, I buy Fair Life milk. After you open it you're suppose to use it within 14 days. But unopened the expiration date is as much as three months. That's another packaging alternative which might help. I usually buy 3-4 containers at a time and I'm set for quite awhile.
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If a store wants to sell an older batch of something, they can put a "sale" sign on it. They already do this.
The QR code? I'm supposed to scan individual cartons, to see what they cost? Seriously?
Note that this only works if you are in real-time communication with the store's server. Which means using the store's app. Which will undoubtedly bombard you with advertising.
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The thought of having to scan a goddamned QR code just to get an expiration date is ridiculous.
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This is obviously BS, but I have another idea to reform expiration dates. Use Y-m-d. I live in Europe and the order is totally random, depends where the product was made, but they don't even tell you that anymore, it must say it was made in the EU, no country.
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If you're wondering how a qr code can give more accurate information than a printed date, the article doesn't say. But it says:
"This makes digital trends valuable," he said, "particularly if they're combined to really allow us to collect data along the food chain."
So they see value in spying users through the milk packages they purchase.
They say that they want to reduce wasted milk by dynamically lowering its price as its expiry date approaches, but I'd expect sellers to already do this, and it doesn't r -
How about something that permanently changes color when it warms up so that it can indicate to you the thing has been left outside and gotten warm, thereby allowing bacteria to grow? That would be easy to implement... just have a sticker with two colored liquids that melt at room temperature.. if they melt and dissolve into each other it'll show the item has been left outside.
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Buying something with a QR code is not the same thing as using the QR code or having any interest in using a QR code.
You stock a college freezer with milk with and without QR codes, and my baseline expectation would be that positioning and relative numbers of each option would be a larger factor in how many of each is picked up than the QR code. You could stack the deck pretty easily by study design, which is not described at all.
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From reading the summary, the real story is that people are willing to buy milk close to expiration if you lower the price. They could do that already with no QR codes involved, in fact I am pretty sure I've seen some stores do that.
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TFA is unfortunately not clear, but it states that there is an element of dynamic pricing in the QR, so if you scan the QR not only get the due date but also the price of that particular carton of milk, that will be reduced progressively as the expiration date approaches. That will hopefully reduce food waste.
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