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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE GREAT POUCHIFICATION OF AMERICAN FOOD  
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Cathy Erway
October 22, 2024
Taste Cooking
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_ Pouchification: convenience, efficiency, and the environmental
impact of our great shift to plastic. _

Both independent start-ups and legacy brands are putting foods in
pouches, creating a new wave of convenience food in portable, packable
single servings, Taste.cooking

 

NOT JUST FOR BABY FOOD ANYMORE, DELICIOUS AND CONVENIENT POUCHES ARE
EVERYWHERE IN THE GROCERY STORE. WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ADULTS
SEEKING A QUICK MEAL—AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF OUR GREAT SHIFT
TO PLASTIC?

Ibraheem Basir knew he had to do something about the state of his
weeknight dinner routine. He was earning a six-figure salary working
in marketing for an organic packaged foods company in Berkeley,
California, but when he came home late at night, all he wanted to eat
was takeout—and not salad bowls but the kind of foods he’d grown
up with in Brooklyn, like fried chicken and biscuits or empanadas.
This wasn’t a matter of price but convenience: he had the salary to
buy more nutritious food, and he wanted to eat healthier, but none of
the healthy and convenient options in the grocery store spoke to his
cravings for comfort.

“You could cook from scratch, but the way we live has evolved a lot,
and maybe we don’t always have the time,” says Basir.

The solution: a pouch.

In 2019, Basir launched his own brand of Latin, Caribbean, and Creole
foods called _A Dozen Cousins_ [[link removed]], with
products like Trini chickpea curry with avocado oil and seasoned rice
cooked in bone broth. When it came to choosing the packaging type,
Basir says it was a no-brainer: 100% of the product line comes in
single-portion-size, shelf-stable plastic pouches. From a supply chain
perspective, they’re lighter to ship and get damaged less than cans,
bottles, or boxes, he says. And for the consumer?

“It’s ready to eat in 60 seconds, and it doesn’t require tools,
pots, or pans,” says Basir. Simply pop a pouch in the microwave and
tear off the top.

Forget the tinned fish renaissance: increasingly, both independent
start-ups and legacy brands are putting foods in pouches, creating a
new wave of convenience food in portable, packable single servings. It
started with _baby food_
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Over the last _couple decades_
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plastic pouches that allow toddlers to suck down food sans spoon have
been largely replacing little jars in the baby food aisle. The pouches
of 2024 check boxes in all categories—whether it’s full meals like
chili or dal with rice, snacks like _peanut butter_
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the pouchification of American grocery foods runs far and wide. And
pouches may represent a sea change in adult eating habits: we’re all
on the go, and we need our Go-Gurt, too.

If you’re old enough to remember—and have been infinitely
frustrated by—Capri-Sun juice packs when they blew up in the early
1990s, you might recall that the packaging was a novelty. Poking a
straw through the top without piercing the back of the pouch proved a
challenge (pro tip: pop the straw in the bottom), but they helped
introduce a generation of Americans to laminated pouches made from
various layers of flexible plastic and metal foils. In industry speak,
they’re known as _doypacks_
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pouches. Empty, they can be folded flat, making them economical to
ship in bulk. Filled, they can stand upright on a grocery shelf thanks
to, well, a pouch that bulges at the bottom. A similarly designed
package where food is sealed and cooked inside the pouch itself is
called a _retort pouch_ [[link removed]].
(This is the kind of pouch used today for many baby food purees,
tunas, and curries.) These pouches were developed in the 1960s and
’70s; the first food product to be sold in one was a curry made by
the Japanese brand Otsuka Foods Co. in 1968.

For beverages, pouches may not have offered consumers much more
convenience than bottles or cans, but they were cheap and lightweight
for the manufacturer; they were also handy for backpackers and
astronauts, for whom light weight and packability is key. Yet while
these pouches were becoming a more common packaging format for
convenience foods sold around the world during the ’80s and ’90s,
adoption beyond the shelves of REI was slow in the United States. Part
of the reason may be that not everyone finds pouches aesthetically
appealing.

Maya Kaimal was initially skeptical herself. As a _cookbook author_
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she found that many Americans perceived Indian food as too complicated
to make at home easily, so she launched _her own popular, eponymous
line_ [[link removed]] of Indian sauces in 2003;
initially they were found in the refrigerated aisle, until Kaimal
began selling shelf-stable jars of simmer sauces in 2010. “I was all
about ‘How can I make it seem as much like homemade cooking as
possible?’” Kaimal recalls. “I thought that cooking sauce in a
kettle and filling it in jars wasn’t a big leap from what you do at
home—the whole pouch thing was just totally mystifying to me.”

Yet Kaimal saw that, among her few competitors, brands of sauces and
ready-to-eat curries in pouches imported from India were finding their
way onto American grocery store shelves. She was surprised that people
seemed to be receptive to Indian food in that format, but she didn’t
love the products she tasted. “I kind of dismissed the whole
category for years. I thought you couldn’t make food taste good in a
pouch,” she admits.

It’s difficult for a small company to invest in new
packaging—manufacturers require huge minimum quantities, and you
have to be confident that you can sell thousands of cases. But Kaimal
was able to find a retort pouch manufacturer in the United States that
was willing to test-trial some recipes with her, and she was
ultimately pleased with the results.

Her brand introduced individual serving-size pouches of dal and chana
curries in 2018, and it was one of Kaimal’s most successful product
launches to date. Like A Dozen Cousins’ offerings, they’re
microwaveable, shelf-stable, and designed to bring anywhere for quick,
single-serve meals. (In comparison, Kaimal’s jarred simmer sauces
offer six servings and require you to add proteins or vegetables.) The
company’s ready-to-eat pouched products have been among its
fastest-growing items, and Kaimal has worked hard to keep up with
demand. She says it’s consistent with her original mission for the
brand: to make Indian foods that are authentic yet approachable to
anyone for everyday eating. “The more convenient you can make it,
the more apt are to try it—and that’s such a hurdle for Indian
food,” Kaimal says.

While the resulting product may look completely different, processing
food in a retort pouch is a lot like canning. Food is vacuum-sealed,
and the pouches are heated under pressure, killing any microorganisms
to prevent the contents from spoiling.

“A retort is essentially a big pressure cooker—it allows you to
cook the food in pouches,” says Kevin McKay, chief operating officer
of _Safe Catch_ [[link removed]], a brand of canned tuna and
other seafood that has been selling its flagship products in 3-ounce,
serving-size retort pouches since 2016, in addition to its 5-ounce
aluminum cans, the mainstay for tuna for the last century.

There are nuances to how it’s done, which can affect the taste and
texture, says McKay. Safe Catch employs not only low-mercury fish and
sustainable fishing practices but a “nothing added, nothing
drained” approach when processing seafood for both cans and retort
pouches. Many tuna manufacturers take the more efficient route of
precooking the fish, then adding liquid back in the form of water or
oil and sometimes an additive called pyrophosphate to help the fish
absorb that liquid better. By cooking the tuna directly in the pouch
or can, Safe Catch can cook it slowly, allowing it to retain its oils
and flavors better, McKay says.

Retort pouches are slightly more expensive than aluminum cans, and the
fish packed in them needs to be cut to a consistent thickness to
promote even cooking. But the benefits of offering tuna in retort
packages have greatly outweighed those challenges, McKay says. There
will always be customers loyal to canned tuna, which is still by far
its most popular format. Through the pouches, though, Safe Catch has
been able to reach new customers who are looking for easy ways to get
single servings of protein, ready to toss in a salad or a paleo bowl.

“People could throw a pouch in their backpack, travel on the go in
the car. You can take it to your office in your bag,” says McKay.

The ring pull tab, so endeared in today’s tinned fish renaissance,
doesn’t cut it for many people either. McKay says the company has
received letters from senior citizens thanking them for the pouches
because they’re much easier to open than the pull tabs on aluminum
cans. Some families see the pouches as more kid-friendly, because
there are no sharp edges like the ones you have after opening a can.
McKay’s own children, aged four and five, will tear open pouches of
tuna and eat them with their hands. “We’re still working on
getting them to use forks more,” he admits.

The notion of cooking in plastic pouches—during the manufacturing
process as well as by microwaving before eating—might sound like a
bad idea, or even downright terrifying, due to _numerous studies_
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the potential for plastic to leach chemicals into food, especially
when heated.

But not all plastics are created equal, says Dr. Claire Sand, owner
of _Packaging Technology and Research_
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that _doesn’t_ leach out compounds can be used at the temperatures
that are approved of _by the FDA_
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The same is true for coatings inside food packaging made of metal,
glass, or paper. However, Sand points out that testing science is
advancing rapidly, and some containers (not just plastic) that were
previously approved for use were later found to be dangerous—as with
PFAS in paperboard food containers, _which the FDA_
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in February. The type of food and its chemical makeup (such as whether
it’s an acidic or oily food) can also affect whether chemicals leach
into it.

In the case of retort pouches with layers of materials that are bound
by adhesives, there is the potential for high temperatures to result
in additives leaching into the food. But the FDA regulates those
temperatures. Sand says that the main danger around heating plastics
occurs when consumers do it in a manner that hasn’t been approved by
the FDA—like reheating leftovers in the microwave in takeout
containers that were not intended for that purpose. “We have been
using retort pouches in the US military since the 1970s. Prior to that
time, soldiers had a high degree of rib injuries due to the cans
cracking their ribs when soldiers landed on their packs,” says Sand.

Another cause for concern when it comes to plastic pouches over cans
or glass? Their recyclability, or lack thereof. Aluminum and glass are
infinitely recyclable without detriment to the quality of the recycled
product. Plastic is notoriously difficult to recycle—if it even
makes it there. By some estimates, only a paltry 5 to 6% of _plastics
are recycled_
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the United States. And when that plastic is sandwiched together with
layers of other materials such as foil to make retort pouches, the
process gets even more complicated. They’re technically
recyclable—however, there are only a few outfits that can actually
recycle them. One is a New Jersey–based start-up
called _TerraCycle_ [[link removed]], which offers a
free _recycling program_
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consumers to send in squeezable plastic pouches and their caps.

Despite the challenges of recycling, producers and retailers say that
pouches have many environmental advantages over traditional packaging
like cans and glass because they’re so much lighter and less
resource-intensive to make. The flexible pouches are also less easily
dented or damaged, resulting in less waste. “Flexible packaging has
both a lower manufacturing cost and uses less energy in production
than cans,” says April Lane, chief merchandising officer of the
online grocer _Thrive Market_ [[link removed]].

As an e-commerce retailer, the brand is always looking to reduce the
weight of packages, to make shipping them less expensive. Founded in
2014, Thrive Market has been a big proponent of brands that sell food
in pouches, like _Proper Good_ [[link removed]]. Thrive
also launched its own line of _cooked beans_
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pouches in 2018, and last fall, it added _dals_
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and _stews_
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single-serving pouches. Since pouches are collapsible and lightweight,
you can fit more of them in a box (and in a truck) than cans or
bottles. Lane points out that the benefits begin before the packaging
is even filled with food: “This is a big energy and cost savings
when you are shipping them to the manufacturer before they are
filled,” says Lane.

Reducing carbon emissions through both manufacturing and shipping
plastic pouches may be one environmental advantage over cans and
glass. But how does that stack up with the endless recyclability of
the latter materials? And what about the potential for plastics to end
up in the ocean, where they’re broken down into microplastics that
have been invading our waterways, our aquatic life, and our bodies in
increasingly greater quantities?

“There is always this trade-off,” says Shelie Miller, a professor
of sustainable systems at University of Michigan’s School for
Environment and Sustainability. “I wish in my field it was easy to
say, ‘all these materials are always better in all things,’ but in
practice, there are always trade-offs where new innovations have some
benefits and some disadvantages.”

Glass and aluminum are derived from mined products that require a
tremendous amount of energy to produce. Because lightweight plastic
packaging uses fewer materials and less supply chain energy, Miller
says that it generally outperforms cans and glass from a climate
impact perspective. A study that _Miller authored_
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that, for instance, a 12-ounce glass bottle has roughly five times the
climate impact of a 12-ounce plastic bottle. “Even with the lack of
recycling infrastructure, the climate impacts of plastic are generally
going to be lower,” she says.

Yet plastic has additional environmental impacts: when it ends up in
waterways, plastics in particular become brittle and break down in
various ways, allowing them to be mistaken for food by wildlife and
become permanent pieces of tiny litter, or microplastics.
Microplastics are now found in everything from human fetuses
to _brain tissue_
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and it’s estimated that the volume of microplastics in our
environment may _double by 2040_
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“I personally wouldn’t feel overly comfortable using pouches
strictly from a microplastic perspective,” wrote Kathryn Kellogg, a
sustainable lifestyle speaker and blogger at _Going Zero Waste_
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more efficient ways to recycle plastics, especially thin plastic
films, which are so difficult to separate out for recycling and hence
seldom are. “TerraCycle does a great job, but we need better and
more convenient infrastructure for film in general.”

Miller notes that when plastics end up in a landfill, it’s an
unfortunate wasted opportunity for resource reuse, but they do minimal
harm there. So we also need to do a better job of ensuring that
plastic does not escape into waterways, where it becomes microplastic.

“I think that packaging is a really important consideration, but
it’s not the only sustainability consideration. It’s the thing
inside the package that matters the most,” says Miller.

Consumers tend to focus on packaging because they take part in getting
rid of it, and they choose which bin it goes in. But, says Miller, the
most important contributor to greenhouse gases is the food and how it
was produced. “We need to be thinking about the foods we buy and the
environmental intensity of the food and making sure we’re reducing
food waste,” she says.

To that extent, she says that the potential for food waste reduction
is perhaps one of the greatest environmental draws of single-serving
pouches. You have one portion and no leftovers to forget about and
eventually waste.

This thought dovetails neatly with the intention of this new wave of
adult foods in baby-food-like pouches: to feed a single person one
meal, and nothing more, as conveniently as possible. Despite the
romantic overtures among today’s food and lifestyle gurus on the
value of eating together, as a family or with friends, this is how
many Americans are getting their dinner in reality. And thanks to a
new spate of independent brands producing single-serving pouch foods,
you can say goodbye to Chef Boyardee and find some pretty delicious
meals and cuisines from around the world in this format too. These
include A Dozen Cousins, Maya Kaimal, and many more brands, like
Brooklyn Delhi—whether it’s making Indian food feel more
accessible on a weeknight or reaching customers hungry for healthy and
culturally relevant foods without cooking or getting takeout, the
pouch has been a go-to solution.

“Post-COVID, I think people are on the go even more now, so the
convenience factor and the time-saving factor is huge,” says Lane of
Thrive Market.

With sales of pouched products exceeding the expectations of many
producers, it’s fair to assume we’ll be seeing more of them in
grocery stores in the years to come. Who knows? The next generation of
adults, raised largely on pouches, might even find them nostalgic.

Cathy Erway is the author of the cookbooks _The Food of
Taiwan_and _Sheet Pan Chicken_, and the memoir _The Art of Eating
In_. She co-wrote _Win Son Presents: A Taiwanese American Cookbook_.
She hosts the podcast Self Evident, exploring Asian American stories.
She has won a James Beard Award and IACP award for her writing at
TASTE.

* food
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* fast-food industry
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* environment
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