Belgian universities searching for ways to stop food waste

If there is one question everyone asks during their lifetime, it may be 'is it safe to eat after the 'best before date'?' From milk, to cheese, meats and fish, is the dreaded deadline for consumption written in stone, or is it possible to eat foods after they've expired? Universities in Belgium and The Netherlands are now trying to find ways of answering these questions through the use of  new technologies more advanced than only a simple date.  Researchers at the Universities of Ghent, KU Leuven, Brussels' VUB, and Nijmegen in Holland are looking at ways to test freshness without actually opening the package simply using your smartphone.  With a food scanning device installed in phones, they want to enable individuals to test food on the supermarket shelf for freshness, regardless of the expiration date. Each package at the store will contain a small chip that will transmit a reading back to the phone, and the consumer.  The researchers hope that such a method will help reduce the amount of food wasted in society, much of which is perfectly safe to eat but still minds the trash bin because of the date on the package. However, it took take up to five years to see the technology in the market, and on people's dinner plates.