Food Wrapping for Thought

Apparently the ability to be able to eat the packaging that you buy your food in is being heralded as the next big innovation in the food market. Just imagine drinking your daily pinta then consuming the bottle!
Think that’s one bite too far?
Well it’s not an entirely new idea, celebrity chef’s like Heston Blumenthal have been promoting the idea for quite a while But now two US companies are currently vying to be the first to commercially exploit the "untapped market" for wrappers you can munch.

Let’s find out more…

Leading the way (in publicity terms, at least) is the Dumbledore of food technology, Harvard wizard Dr David Edwards whose previous innovations include an "breathable" chocolate delightfully called Le Whif He has now turned his attention to WikiCells - an edible membrane made from a biodegradable polymer and food particles - that can imitate "bottles" found in nature, such as grape skins.
So far, Dr Edwards and his team at Harvard's Wyss Institute have created a tomato membrane containing gazpacho soup, an orange membrane filled with orange juice that can be sipped through a straw, a grape-like membrane holding wine and a chocolate membrane containing hot chocolate. He believes pretty much any flavour is possible.

He recently told Harvard's campus newspaper Harvard Crimson that his team was working on a prototype bottle that had an eggshell-like hard coating in addition to the membrane that could be peeled off or eaten whole. "In the near term, we will be encountering WikiCells in restaurant settings," he told the paper. He then plans to expand WikiCells into shops and supermarkets.

Meanwhile, Indiana-based MonoSol is hot on Dr Edward's heels. Its water-soluble casings are already widely used to make squidgy pods of washing detergent. The company has been developing tasty edible films that are strong enough to act as packaging until they come into contact with water and dissolve. Products in the pipeline include individual servings of hot chocolate and other drinks that you slip straight into cups, and single servings of flavoured porridge. The company currently is punting the product to major food brands and it could be on the shelves in a year or two.

Closer to home, Leicester-based Pepceuticals last month won a £1.3m European research contract to develop an edible coating for fresh meat, which the company says could increase shelf life, reduce waste and do away with the need for oil-based plastic vacuum packs. It cites research that shows UK consumers spend more money on meat than any other food item, but waste an astonishing 570,000 tonnes each year. "The potential to apply an antimicrobial film in the processing factory should significantly prevent the deterioration of the fresh meat product, and save waste. It will revolutionise the look and feel of the traditional meat counter,"

Link to original article.

What's Your Worst Food Nightmare?

Food!
We love it - we hate it - it can rule our lives and spoil our looks and ruin our self image.
The thing is that sometimes it's difficult to know the real truth about what IS good for us and what is not.
Here's a short video that might help.

Top 10 Worst Foods

Anyone for a Heart Attack Burger?

Now if I said – this could only happen in America – I might find myself in trouble. But actually I don’t think it’s true any longer.

Looking around the town where I live I see so many people abusing their bodies with excess food that even walking along the street becomes difficult.

However the Vegas woman in the news recently was eating a ‘double by-pass burger, smoking cigarettes and drinking margaritas…I wonder if she was surprised when she collapsed and had to be carted off to hospital?

Apparently she’s not the first to be taken ill at the Heart Attack Grill – back in February a man actually suffered a heart attack whilst eating a similar burger.

This excess is something I just can’t understand. It’s not just that they eat these enormous burgers ( can’t stand them myself) – it’s more the fact that they have so little respect for themselves, their bodies and their life.

Why would anyone want to cope with the problems that occur with extreme weight – you see them on the telly from time to time as well as in your own home town – and why do the so called friends and families of those that are housebound continue to feed the such unhealthy food?

I’ve never actually heard a sensible answer to this question – unless you know better. Love to hear from you.

Welcome to Food News.

Let's start with an issue that should worry us all ... the amount of food we waste when half the world's population is starving and a good portion of the rest are suffering from the effects of inflation.

Here's an article that will give us more food for thought!

It’s not exactly breaking news that humans waste a lot of our food, but a new study by the National Resources Defense Council puts a striking figure on the actual statistics, suggesting that we waste a whopping 30 and 50% of all food produced. With the average American discarding 33 lbs of food each month, MSNBC calculates that each person is responsible for throwing out an adult gorilla’s weight in food each year. That’s a lot of food.

Read more...

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