Rice and pasta packaging rant

Why is it impossible to open one of these packs without the plastic tearing open spilling your rice / pasta everywhere. And to add insult to injury, the "resealable" tags stick about as well as a politician to a pre election promise.

We stand shoulder to shoulder on rice and pasta packaging. What on earth is that about?

The idea with spaghetti is that you grip the packet loosely and bang it down, end first, onto a table. The pasta then emerges from the end, at which point you cook far too much.

As for the others - there seems to be an entire industry whose main function in life is to make packaging which cannot be opened tidily nor resealed once opened. See also dried beans, sultanas, and 100g herb packets.

And don't get me started on the glue they use to stick the end of flour packets down with...

Talking of glue, why can't they make a container for SuperGlue that doesn't stick itself shut solid after only half a dozen applications? It never used to be that difficult to make it last a long time

Yes, spaghetti. Try that with farfoli. There is no reason to make packaging from plastic that tears in random directions. Force these people to use their packaging as drinking vessels and condoms. Then we'll see some common sense!

Classic !

Memory from my younger days working in BBC Leeds - watching voxpop of some young lasses from, um, Sheffield I think, saying how careful they were during sex, using crisp packets as condoms... :eek:

Ah, Sheffield, City of my Cheese'n'onion youth...!

It was cling film and rubber bands at Magna Carta School, Egham during the late 1970s and early 1980s according to my mother who taught there.

That's a foil to conceive...




I'm trying to imagine how you got on to that topic of conversation with your esteemed mater, Pete.


Easy solution = always cut the top of the packet with scissors.

Forget the non-stick sticky tab, use an elastic band.


QED.

I believe it was the teat from a baby's milk bottle around here.... Not that I ever quite understood the mechanics.

On food packaging - I appreciate the easy open cans but why is it the more likely the contents are to stain (red tomato based contents) the more likely that as you draw the lid back you get a difficult bit followed by a release of tension and the contents sprayed in all directions?

That only applies if you're grumpy. Or can-twang-kerous.

Hopefully I'm not the only one but

I sometimes have trouble opening packs of bacon, they have that little pull back section on the corner of the packaging but it always snaps and I always end up cutting a straight slice down the side with a knife.

+1

+2 Every single time.

Yep, same here with the bacon.

With regards to the rice, go to Sainsbury and get some Thai style rice. It comes in different packets that are made of cardboard and you can re-seal them, no joke!

Yup - I despair of a lot of packaging. I used to work in this part of the industry and "access" was one of our key measures. Some packaging (like those security blister packs) is downright dangerous. Like others, I've learned that good scissors or a sharp knife is often the only way to get into some packaging.

I've found an incredibly effective diet, only buy Co-op microwave meals.
Can't get the film off a single damn one of them.

I reckon there's an entire sub-industry within the mobile phone industry, to try to design a box as small as possible for a given phone + accessories, with the subsidiary aim of making sure that its completely impossible to put it all back in again when you come to sell the phone a year or so later - how do they do that - wizardry?

Nah, unstable dimensional transcendentalism.

Corned beef tins. Always need a pair of pliers handy for when the key tab breaks off...

The stupid pull-out plug in the top of some cooking oil/soy sauce/fruit juice. You can't pull it out without firing a salvo of the contents across the kitchen.

And the clear plastic over the lid of things like Listerine - it has perforations to make you think it will tear off, but no. It won't.

Much like the things that look like zips on cardboard packaging. Do they ever work?

Blimey, looks like I'm not a packaging fan.

Ah, Jim, but isn't it wonderful when you find one that just works?!

I don't know!

I'm with you all on the rice and pasta. We have loads of dried fruits too and even those little plastic clips to reseal bags are pointless if the bag is ripped.

Packets of cooked meats also annoy me. The little tab which you peel back is in one corner. However, the sliced meat inside is actually stacked in an oftset little pile so that the top one is nearest to the other corner. This means you have to peel open the pack further to get that one, or try to manouvre the bottom one out somehow.

This is why IKEA sell those clear jars so you can have your rice and pasta on display in your kitchen like a trendy Swede.

And tax discs (now defunct of course) but the perforations were never good enough to prevent me ripping the disc, so I used to resort to scissors.

Slightly off subject, but i had 2 bonnet struts and a grab handle delivered today. They were wrapped in plastic first, then covered in layers of masking tape and then covered in reams of selotape ! Took me ages to get into it, even with scissors . Never will i moan about " listerine " again !

Fair comment. These are all rather first world problems!

Oh the irony!

I'm sure that if we started to send aid to Africa in the kind of packaging those scissors are in they would sympathise.

Being sort of elected to be i/c laundry in the BumbleBee household I wash my black and yellow pyjamas by hand get annoyed with the soap powder boxes which are initially apparently leakproof when you buy them but start to shed fine trails of powder as soon as you breach their defences.

Especially when eking the last grains from the container, you tip it up and the bloody stuff pours out of every cardboard orifice immediately prior to you treading in it and tramping it into all the nearby rugs

Now, that reminds me. The same tough and sharp plastic packaging that printer cartridges and various tools come in.

You virtually need to borrow the "jaws of life" from the Fire Service to open the packaging. And when you do, you usually sever your carotid artery on the sharp edges.

I've lost count of the pints of blood I've had transfused after severing various main arteries on such items. You'd think I'd have learned by now. Once, I died 3 times in the same day.

At the risk of actually bringing down the tone of this thread with a semi serious post, open that type of packaging with a can opener. Far quicker, easier and tidier than the jaws of life... and slightly fewer deaths per package.

They still use soap powder in Scotland? My mum is almost 80 and uses liquid...

I work in the food industry, though not with rice or pasta.

The reason behind the packaging tearing issue is simply cost. A thinner polypropylene film is cheaper, but is more susceptible to tearing when subjected to very little stress.

Think of crisp packets, the value ones are 30 micron film and have the rice/pasta packet issue. The posh ones like kettle chips etc use 60 or 80 micron and are much more robust.

Like most things, it all comes down to cost.

Obviously, facetious comments aside, the scissor way or the tin opener way depending on what you decide, to be honest if you use the correct procedure no big deal. Then again it all depends how you think how difficult an easy procedure can or cannot be....