Consumer Electronics Can Ensure Food Safety [Notes from the Editor]

elcome to the first 2019 issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine. We had a successful 2018, publishing six issues for the first time. The magazine has reached its readers more frequently with the latest technical trends as well as activities and news from the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine has an impressive impact factor of 1.434 as determined by Clarivate Analytics (formerly IP Science of Thomson Reuters). It has improved by 24.3% from the impact factor of 1.153 last year. I would like to thank the CE Society president and vice president of publications for their support. This issue is dedicated to foodquality monitoring. You may recall the January 2018 issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine focused on smart health care. The various aspects of smart health care include healthy living, assisted living, remote health care, stress management, and automatic health monitors. Good food is one of the most basic requirements for healthy living and a high quality of life in modern society. Ensuring the quality of food should be an integral part of both smart health care and smart agriculture. Smart agriculture can handle food supply chain security, combating counterfeits (including seeds, organics, and vegetables), reduction of spoilage, enhancement of consumer knowledge and safety, and efficient food recall. Ensuring food quality at the source end through smart agriculture and the consumer end through smart health care serves as double assurance before food is consumed. Food can naturally decompose or become contaminated due to storage that exceeds its projected life span. Food can also be purposefully adulterated. Thus, requiring accurate and portable mechanisms to verify the quality of food products is vital before consumption for a healthy lifestyle.