In color psychology, blue is often cited as an appetite suppressant. Research suggests that eating light-colored food off a dark blue plate encourages people to eat less. But when it comes to foodservice, blue has a much different meaning: safety.
The Use of the Color Blue in Food Production
While there are no specific regulations calling for the use of blue, the food industry often uses blue gloves and blue food-safe bandages. So why blue? Blue is the least common color for foods, so it’s easier to spot against most foods. Some food production facilities even use spectrograms to detect blue-colored foreign objects on their production lines.
If a foodservice worker, for example, has a blue bandage over a cut on their finger, it reduces the chance of another accidental cut because the bandage increases the contrast between the worker's fingers and the food being sliced.
Many commercial foodservice production facilities use metal detectors, so many facilities provide blue, food-safe metal detectable bandages, making it easier to locate potential contamination should the bandage loosen and fall off the wearer.
Why Do Adam Scales Have Blue Feet?
Unlike many competitive products, an advantage to several Adam Equipment scales for the foodservice industry is that they feature blue feet and blue accents, providing those benefits of visibility.
So why would you need to see the feet of a scale so clearly? Like most weighing scales for industrial and manufacturing applications, the feet on the bottom of the scale can be turned to increase or decrease the height of the scale. In other words, the feet are adjustable to ensure the scale is sitting level on the worktop.
However, should the feet of the scale be turned too much, there is a risk they could fall off. Granted, there is a lot of travel on an Adam scale’s foot and it would have be turned for quite a while before it fell off. But if it did, that foot would be easily visible when you need to pop it back on.
The underside of the removeable stainless steel pans on Adam Equipment’s Aqua Washdown Scales and Aqua Stainless Steel Washdown Scales are blue, reducing the risk of misplacing the pan during cleaning.
What is IP-Certified Protection?
In addition to blue feet, Adam’s versatile Aqua and Aqua Stainless Steel offer protection against water and foreign particles: they’re certified IP67 and IP68, respectively.
This level of protection is critical for a scale in a demanding environment like foodservice, food production or restaurant kitchens. In fact, we’d only recommend IP-rated scales for these applications.
IP67 means that a product is dust proof and that it may be immersed in water of up to one meter for less than 30 minutes with limited ingress of water allowed, while IP68 means that it’s fully protected against dust as well as protected against full immersion under water deeper than one meter and water ingress will not harm the product.
What is an In-Use Cover?
Weighing food safely in a food production environment also means using the appropriate scales and, as we’ve discussed, IP-rated scales are essential for this application.
For additional protection in such a demanding environment, consider an in-use cover, which fits over the body of the scale and ensures that water, dust and foodstuffs do not touch the scale. They’re particularly useful for scales that without an IP rating, or maybe have an IP rating of 67 or lower.
Using in-use covers for scales mean that, rather than cleaning the scale at the end of the day, the cover itself can be cleaned (or removed and cleaned), which in turn helps prolong the life of the scale.
Why Do Some Scales in Food Production Have Two Displays?
Both Aqua ranges feature front and rear displays, which allow two workers to share the scale for increased productivity.
If two workers are on either side of a bench, both can see the weight reading without the scale having to be turned around, which helps both with speeding up processes and also reduces handling of the scale.
Whichever scale you use for foodservice applications, Adam products are designed with safety in mind. If you need help finding the right foodservice scale (with blue feet!), contact us with any questions.