Advertising: Hey, I'm talking to you - buy me!

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that we may soon have food talking to us.

Ann Stirling Roberts, director of Pira International, a British company specialising in packaging technology, a delegate at the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology convention in Sydney, said a European company had developed a prototype talking milk carton, fitted with a temperature sensor.

Another European company had experimented with talking margarine tubs. "When you opened the lid, it sang to you and told you that you had won a prize."

She saw the day when shoppers would use mobile phones to "interrogate" products on the shelves.