**5. Conclusion**

Food waste is a global problem caused in large part by food spoilage that has gone undetected. This problem exacerbates world hunger issues and affects consumers by causing them to pay too high a price for food products whose shelf lives have been improperly or inadequately estimated. Several technologies have been applied to improve the detection of food spoilage and provide better valorization of food products at all points along the food supply chain, but many of these methods are either unreliable or damage the samples being evaluated. Spectroscopic techniques, on the other hand, offer a reliable and non-invasive means of detecting and

**109**

**Author details**

around the globe.

Nicholas MacKinnon4

and Fartash Vasefi3

, Ray Duran1

\*

2 SafetySpect, London, United Kingdom

provided the original work is properly cited.

3 SafetySpect, Los Angeles, CA, USA

, Stanley Ng1

, Kouhyar Tavakolian1

1 University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA

4 Clinical Research, SafetySpect Inc., Los Angeles, CA, USA

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*Address all correspondence to: fvasefi@safetyspect.com

, Thomas Burke2

, Alireza Akhbardeh4

, Kenneth Barton3

,

John Chauvin1

*Advanced Optical Technologies in Food Quality and Waste Management*

quantifying spoilage. Recent developments in fundamental spectroscopic technologies have enabled the development and productization of portable and handheld devices for conducting analysis of food products in-situ. Furthermore, algorithmic advancements have improved our ability to extract the most relevant features from the spectroscopic data and yield highly accurate classifications and quantifications of spoilage. These technologies, in combination with advancements such as blockchain, used in conjunction with technologies like SafetySpect's QAT scanner, offer the promise to reduce food waste and extend shelf lives through detection of spoilage at earlier points along the food supply chain and will provide the ability to impose intelligent pricing and traceability tracking for the benefit of consumers

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97624*

#### *Advanced Optical Technologies in Food Quality and Waste Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97624*

quantifying spoilage. Recent developments in fundamental spectroscopic technologies have enabled the development and productization of portable and handheld devices for conducting analysis of food products in-situ. Furthermore, algorithmic advancements have improved our ability to extract the most relevant features from the spectroscopic data and yield highly accurate classifications and quantifications of spoilage. These technologies, in combination with advancements such as blockchain, used in conjunction with technologies like SafetySpect's QAT scanner, offer the promise to reduce food waste and extend shelf lives through detection of spoilage at earlier points along the food supply chain and will provide the ability to impose intelligent pricing and traceability tracking for the benefit of consumers around the globe.
