Logistic Transport System for Nutritional Substances

Abstract

Disclosed herein is a preservation system for storage and logistic transport of nutritional substances. The preservation system obtains information about the nutritional substance to be preserved, senses and measures the external environment to the preservation system, senses and measures the internal environment to the preservation system, senses and measures the state of the nutritional substance, and stores such information throughout the period of preservation. Using this accumulated information, the preservation system can measure, or estimate, changes in nutritional content (usually degradation) during the period of preservation. Additionally, the preservation system can use this information to dynamically modify the preservation system to minimize detrimental changes to the nutritional content of the nutritional substance, and in some cases actually improve the nutritional substance attributes.

Description

RELATED PATENT APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 059,441, filed Oct. 21, 2013, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 051,379, filed Oct. 10, 2013, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 485,854, filed May 31, 2012, which claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 624,948 filed Apr. 16, 2012; U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 624,972, filed Apr. 16, 2012; and U.S. Provisional Patent Application, 61 / 624,985, filed Apr. 16, 2012, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present inventions relate to collection, transmission, creation and use of information regarding preservation of nutritional substances during logistic transport.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Nutritional substances are traditionally grown (plants), raised (animals) or synt...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018]In a further object of the present invention, preservation systems, including packaging, storage systems and containers, and logistic transport, can dynamically interact with a nutritional substance being preserved, in order to maintain and / or improve and / or minimize degradation of the nutritional substance in order to maintain, improve, or minimize degradation of a nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value, or otherwise favorably influence a ΔN related to the nutritional substance.

[0033]In an embodiment of the present invention, a system is provided for the creation, collection, storage, transmission, and / or processing of information regarding a dynamically labeled nutritional substance so as to improve, maintain, or minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value of the nutritional substance. Additionally, such information may be provided for use by creators, preservers (including logistic transporters), transformers, conditioners, and consumers of the nutritional substance. In a preferred embodiment, this information is openly available and openly integrated at any point in time to all constituents in the nutritional substance supply system. It is preferred that dynamic labeling provided with the nutritional substance enables the integration and availability of the information and that this information becomes openly available and openly integrated as soon as it is created. The nutritional information creation, preservation, and transmission system of the present invention may allow the nutritional substance supply system to improve its ability to minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic value of the nutritional substance, and / or inform the consumer, creator, preserver (including logistic transporter), transformer, conditioner, or consumer about such degradation, or ΔN. While the ultimate goal of the nutritional substance supply system can be to minimize degradation of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic values, or as it relates to ΔN, minimize the negative magnitude of ΔN, an interim goal may be providing consumers with significant information regarding any change, particularly degradation, of nutritional, organoleptic and / or aesthetic values of nutritional substances, and / or component nutritional substances thereof, consumers select and consumer, the ΔN, such that desired information regarding specific residual nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic values can be ascertained using the ΔN. Entities within the nutritional substance supply system that provide such ΔN information regarding nutritional substances, particularly regarding degradation, will be able to differentiate their products from those who obscure and / or hide such information. Additionally, such entities should be able to charge a premium for products which either maintain their nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value, or supply more complete information about changes in their nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic value, the ΔN.

Problems solved by technology

While the collectors and creators of nutritional substances generally obtain and / or generate information about the source, history, caloric content and / or nutritional content of their products, they generally do not pass such information along to the users of their products.

Further, there is no information available to the consumer regarding changes in nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values of nutritional substances or regarding residual nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values of the nutritional substance after they have been conditioned, and no way for the consumer to know what conditioning protocol will achieve the nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values he desires.

However, no information is provided to the supermarket regarding baseline nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic of the corn, ΔN values occurring prior to receipt by the transformer, resulting from transformation, or resulting from logistic transport to the supermarket (i.e. distribution via truck to the supermarket).

However, no information on baseline nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values, ΔN of such values, or corresponding residual nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values of the ready-to-eat dinner is passed along to the consumer.

Further, the packaging of the ready-to-eat dinner may only provide the consumer with rudimentary instructions regarding how to cook or reheat the ready-to-eat dinner in a microwave oven, toaster oven or conventional oven, and only identify that the dinner contains whole kernel corn among the various items in the dinner, preparation by consumer, and finally consumption by the consumer.

The consumer of the dinner will likely not express opinions on the quality of the dinner, unless it was an especially bad experience, where the consumer might contact the producer's customer support program to complain.

Unfortunately, today consumers have no way to access information regarding the extent to which nutritional substances have changed, the ΔN (typically a degradation), at any moment during their life-cycle.

Accordingly, they cannot determine the actual residual nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values of the nutritional substance.

Further, they have no access to information regarding how a nutritional substance's nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values will further change (usually a degradation) during local storage and conditioning, and no way to access information regarding how to condition a nutritional substance in order to achieve desired residual nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values.

However, the producer of the ready-to-eat dinner, in the prior example, has very little information to share other than possibly the source of the elements of the ready-to-eat dinner and its processing steps in preparing the dinner.

Generally, the producer of the ready-to-eat dinner does not know the nutritional content and organoleptic state and aesthetic condition of the product after it has been reheated or cooked by the consumer, cannot predict changes to these properties, ΔN, and cannot inform a consumer of this information to enable the consumer to better meet their needs.

For example, in the milk supply chain, at least 10% of the milk produced is wasted due to safety margins included in product expiration dates.

Unfortunately, today there is no such system or dynamic nutritional substance labeling.

While grocery stores, restaurants, and all those who process and sell food and beverages may obtain some information from current nutritional substance tracking systems, such as existing non-dynamic nutritional substance labeling, these current systems can provide only limited information.

Nutritional substance collectors and / or producers, such as growers (plants), ranchers (animals) or synthesizer (synthetic compounds), routinely create and collect information about their products, however, that information is generally not accessible by their customers.

Even if such producers wished to provide such information to their customers, there is no current method of labeling, encoding or identifying each particular product to provide such information (even though all plants, animals and in general, nutritional substances have a natural fingerprint).

While there are limited methods and systems available, they are excessively costly, time consuming, and do not trace, or provide access to, the nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic state across the product's lifecycle.

An important issue in the creation, preservation, transformation, conditioning, and consumption of nutritional substances are the changes in nutritional, organoleptic, or aesthetic values, ΔN, that occur in nutritional substances due to a variety of internal and external factors.

Because nutritional substances are composed of biological, organic, and / or chemical compounds, they are generally subject to degradation.

This degradation generally reduces the nutritional, organoleptic, and / or aesthetic values of nutritional substances.

However, being able to consume nutritional substances at the farm, at the slaughterhouse, at the fishery, or at the food processing plant is at least inconvenient, if not impossible.

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