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from the gives-new-meaning-to-"Who-cut-the-cheese?" dept.
Picture this: Three years from now, you open the fridge and unwrap a package of string cheese. You eat it. It tastes better, somehow, than the ones you ate as a kid. Then you eat the packaging. And your body thanks you for it.
That's the near-future envisioned by researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who are developing environmentally friendly food packaging made from milk protein, the American Chemical Society announced this week.
The material could replace the thin plastic film now stretched around blocks of cheese, packages of steaks and other foods at your supermarket. The kicker: This protein-based packaging isn't just biodegradable and edible – it keeps food fresher than plastic, too.
The film's protein, casein, bonds tightly, creating a packaging that's up to 500 times more effective than plastics at keeping oxygen away from food, researchers said. That means the packaging is better for the earth and better for your food, and it can be eaten, they said.
Dr. Laetitia Bonnaillie, a co-leader of the study, expects to see the casein packaging hit store shelves within three years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @08:30AM
One of the functions of packaging is to keep food clean of inedible contaminants. When you eat the packaging too, remember to wash everything first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @08:43AM
Indeed. Biodegradable? Good. Edible? Silly.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday August 29 2016, @11:11PM
Yep. My first thought was really a memory:
Little boy in the grocery store wipes his runny nose and then grabs the package of string cheese only to be crying 10 seconds later when told no. String cheese put back on the rack.
Then there are studies about the amount of feces that are actually on the surface of our smart phones, tablets, and touch screen surfaces. I'm never eating the surface area of anything that spends that much time in so many different hands.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @09:41AM
It doesn't have to replace all the plastic.
Bulk string cheese or American singles are sold in plastic, and then have wrappers or films on the inside. This could replace the plastic on the inside. Still sanitary.
Other examples in the article:
K-Cups: wrap them in casein like they are detergent pods, then put them in a recyclable cardboard box.
Ramen: not sure what to put these in, but the casein would trap dry noodles that would otherwise scatter, then dissolve in the water. If it is strong, you could break the noodles in half within the casein and not have it scatter.
"Sprayed onto breakfast cereal, the protein coating could also keep cornflakes from getting soggy" <- what the fuck
Again with cereal, it normally comes wrapped in plastic inside cardboard boxes. Casein could keep it fresh longer, and they could make it resealable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @10:54AM
Doesn't replace but adds even more layers of packaging? Oh ho no. Futurama already covered that dumb idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxmP8IcoKtE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @12:32PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 29 2016, @12:09PM
American singles are sold in plastic
Rather than inventing some weird artificial stuff for people to eat, wouldn't it be easier from an engineering perspective to issue blocks of cheese and invent a small scale way of chopping single servings off the larger block?
Not even entirely going for the snarky-mod, in that it would seem a fun engineering project to invent a "single block of cheese"-durability level of all or mostly plastic cheese cutter. End user shoves block of colby or swiss or WTF out of the package, then turns the dial or WTF and the cheese is sliced off an drops onto plate. Of course you'll have old people from the great depression keeping every slicer they ever buy, and idiots sticking their fingers in there to slice them off. There are always problems with any design I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @01:51PM
Real cheese can be sold in slices, but you can't beat this [staticflickr.com].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:51PM
Are you familiar with spiral-sliced ham? it has a single helical slice in it when you buy it, then after cooking you make one cut to the axial bone, from one side, and the whole thing falls into c-shaped slices.
I wonder if a similar approach might be applicable to cheese -- obviously you need some paper-like liner in the helical slit to keep the cheese from sticking to itself, but it greatly simplifies the slicing apparatus if you only half to cut 1/8" or 1/4" thick, instead of a whole 1-3" width.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 29 2016, @08:09PM
I would imagine anything extrudable can be extruded into any shape... Imagine rotini pasta shaped cheese. Or elbow macaroni shaped cheese bits.
That combined with a chopper might be interesting.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 29 2016, @05:47PM
..I still think you are describing a knife.
They are slightly annoying because you need a (larger) workspace, and you need to clean it afterwards.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday August 29 2016, @10:39PM
It can't be a knife; he's looking at it from an "engineering perspective." That means either a laser or plasma cutter.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @01:00PM
They thought of that:
To keep the packaging clean and dry for consumption, products using them would need to be shipped, shelved and sold in external containers made of plastic or cardboard — the same kind of secondary packaging many single-serve products already use.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 29 2016, @05:21PM
This is the first thing that came to my mind. I've been to quite a few crappy supermarkets and corner stores who don't bother to regularly clean their refrigerated cases and the smell of spoiled dairy and meat leaks and drippings, stuck in every possible crevice wafts down the aisle. Believe me, you don't want to eat the wrapper.
Biodegradable for composting is fine thank you.