Weighing Food Safely: Why Adam Scales Have Blue Feet

Have you ever noticed that blue is often used in food production environments for things like plasters and gloves? There’s a very good reason for that – and it’s why you’ll find Adam Equipment scales have blue feet, too. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at this and some of the other advantages of using Adam scales for weighing food safely in food production environments.

The Use of the Colour 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 plasters. So why blue? Blue is the least common colour 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 plaster over a cut on their finger, it reduces the chance of another accidental cut because the plaster 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 plaster 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 food 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 ABW Washdown Scales and Aqua ABW-S Waterproof Bench 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 ABW and ABW-S boast protection against water and foreign particles: they are 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-certified scales for these applications.

IP67 means that a product is dust proof and that it may be immersed in water of up to one metre 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 greater than one metre and water ingress will not harm the product.

What is an In-Use Cover?

Weighing food safely in a food production environment also means having suitable scales and, as we’ve discussed, IP-certified scales are essential for this application.

Additional protection for a scale in such an environment is the in-use cover. This is particularly useful for scales that aren’t IP-certified, or maybe have an IP rating of 67 or lower. The in-use cover fits over the body of the scale and ensures that water, dust and foodstuffs do not touch the scale.

In-use covers for scales mean that, rather than cleaning the scale at the end of the day, the cover can be cleaned (or removed and cleaned), which in turn helps prolong the life of the scale.

Why Do Some Scales for 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 reducing handling of the scale.

Whichever scale you use for food production or 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.

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