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Where the trendy mid-century coffee table or cube shelf for records from an Ikea flatpack is a right of passage for many 20-somethings, material scientists have unveiled a way to do the same thing for pasta — making your favorite Italian dish suddenly easier to transport and unexpectedly making it environmentally friendly in the process.
It’s something that Carnegie Mellon University’s Morphing Matter Lab director Lining Yao says even apply to shapes like macaroni.
“Based on our geometrical calculation, flatly pack macaroni pasta could save more than 60% of the packaging space,” Yao tells Inverse. “Because more than half of the food packaging space, in this case, is used to pack air.”
In a new study, Yao and her team demonstrate how to construct flat-packed pasta that can twist and contort into a myriad of pasta shapes — from spirals to cones — in just a matter of seconds. The secret sauce? Just a few strategically imprinted grooves on the pasta itself.
More than just a Spy Kids or Star Trek-esque way to transform our favorite foods, Yao says it’s also a way to streamline the manufacturing process and reduce a different kind of food waste: wasted space.
The research, accompanied by a delightful video and images of flat pasta’s springing to attention, was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
www.inverse.com
It’s something that Carnegie Mellon University’s Morphing Matter Lab director Lining Yao says even apply to shapes like macaroni.
“Based on our geometrical calculation, flatly pack macaroni pasta could save more than 60% of the packaging space,” Yao tells Inverse. “Because more than half of the food packaging space, in this case, is used to pack air.”
In a new study, Yao and her team demonstrate how to construct flat-packed pasta that can twist and contort into a myriad of pasta shapes — from spirals to cones — in just a matter of seconds. The secret sauce? Just a few strategically imprinted grooves on the pasta itself.
More than just a Spy Kids or Star Trek-esque way to transform our favorite foods, Yao says it’s also a way to streamline the manufacturing process and reduce a different kind of food waste: wasted space.
The research, accompanied by a delightful video and images of flat pasta’s springing to attention, was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Ikea-like pasta is the Earth-friendly food of the future
Researchers have designed a pasta noodle that can be flat-packed, like Ikea furniture, and then spring to life in water -- all while decreasing packaging waste.
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