Outside the Box: The Story of Food Packaging

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The invention of food packaging is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It may seem hard to imagine today, but the first clay pots made the great civilizations of the ancient world possible, while paper’s first use, long before it became a surface for writing, was to wrap food. But packaging’s proliferation, combined with the invention of plastics, has become one of our biggest environmental headaches. In this episode, we explore the surprising history of how our food got dressed—and why and how we might want to help it get naked again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Well, of course, some of the earliest you might not even recognize as packages, it would
0:06.3	be the human hand, it would be the human stomach, be the mouth, it would be leaves that
0:13.3	chimps or early humans would use to transport products, it would be gourds, horns, eventually
0:20.5	baskets much later.
0:22.9	These gourds and leaves and horns, they're the first food packaging and they started something
0:29.1	that ended up changing the course of human civilization.
0:32.4	I know it might sound like we're overselling things a bit here, but really bear with us,
0:37.0	it'll all make sense.
0:38.6	You're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science
0:41.9	and history.
0:42.9	I'm Cynthia Grieber and I'm Nicola Twilly and this episode we are going to tell you the
0:47.0	story of how our food got dressed and why we might want to help it get naked again.
0:52.1	In other words, it's the story of packaging.
0:56.6	It's interesting because I went to Bali last year and they had no plastic until 15 years
1:02.6	ago so everything, all of their food was wrapped in leaves.
1:06.6	That's Robert Proctor, he's a professor of history of science at Stanford University
1:10.2	and co-author of the book Packaged Pleasures, How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized
1:15.2	Desire.
1:16.2	And in the book, Robert and his co-author Gary Cross go back to the dawn of packaging.
1:21.0	Well, almost the dawn.
1:22.7	The Robert says the very first food packaging would have been a femoral.
1:26.6	Those leaves haven't left much trace in the archaeological record.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.