NEW YORK – More and more foods are hitting store shelves with clear packaging, and for good reason: Shoppers are more inclined to buy a product when can they see what they're getting.

However, food can degrade quickly when exposed to light, making it a challenge to develop see-through packaging that maintains the contents’ quality. Furthermore, not all foods are meant to be seen — think of chips that break into pieces in transit or cereal that seems devoid of raisins at first glance.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, General Mills worked for more than a year to put Larabar Uber fruit-and-nut bars in clear wrappers. The company’s packaging research team tested a variety of clear films, which are layers of thin plastic fused together to control the flow of oxygen, light and moisture in and out of a package. Each version of the packaging went into a climate-controlled box to mimic conditions such as grocery store shelves (dark and dry) and convenience store counters (direct sunlight on a humid day).

All the effort paid off, though. Larabar’s marketing manager told the Wall Street Journal that when the clear wrapper version of the bar hit shelves earlier this year consumers surveyed said that that the bars looked like they tasted better, felt less artificial and the ingredients seemed fresher, although the recipe hadn't changed at all. General Mills has since begun using more transparent packaging on its other products.