It’s unsung efforts like these that I find intriguing:
Flat-pack furniture is commonplace, and flat-pack pasta might be one day too.
Wen Wang of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and her colleagues have developed edible 2D pasta that swells into 3D shapes when cooked, such as long spirals resembling fusilli and saddle shapes similar to conchiglie.
The researchers believe that flat-pack dry pasta could drastically reduce the amount of packaging required for the foodstuff, as well as saving on storage and transportation space.
For example, when macaroni is packaged, around 60 per cent of the space in the box or bag is air, estimates Wang.
The 2D pasta morphs into 3D shapes when boiled because each piece is lined with tiny grooves, less than 1 millimetre wide, in particular patterns. The grooves increase the surface area of some parts of a piece of pasta. Areas with a higher surface area absorb water and swell faster, says Wang, who now works at food and drink company Nestlé. [“Flat pasta that morphs into 3D shapes when cooked saves on packaging,” Donna Lu, NewScientist (15 May 2021)]
That’s the sort of cool stuff that tickles me.
