Are you put off by the idea of irradiated food? I am. But I confess that I’m also a little leery of eating raw spinach and other leafy greens after the last fall’s deadly E. coli debacle.
Now there’s hope for extreme germaphobes and all the rest of us who’d like to be sure that our food is safe to eat.
In “Edible Films with Superpowers” (The New York Times, August 29, 2007, Dining Out, pp. 1 and 5), Kim Severson reports that chemists are developing edible films and powders that make use of the “natural pathogen fighters found in everyday food." “If their work pans out, thin films woven with thyme derivative that can kill E. coli could line bags of fresh spinach,” Severson writes. Yesss!
Invisible films, made from ingredients such as fibers from crab and shrimp shells mixed with lysozyme, “a protein found in both eggs and human tears,” may be impregnated with molecules from bacteria-zapping spices and herbs—among them, cloves, thyme and oregano, all of which have powerful anti-microbial properties. “The result is a film that could coat fruit or meat or even become an edible yogurt lid.”
It’s not all about bacteria, though. Scientists are also working on films with flavor. The article mentions curry-like smells wafting from the Rutgers University Food Science Department, and “a company called Origami Foods now wraps sushi…in carrot film” invented by Tara McHugh. a food researcher with the Department of Agriculture in San Francisco. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome—from the films’ sensitivity to humidity to potential allergic reactions to eggs and shellfish—“but food scientists believe the potential for using these everyday ingredients to make a safer food supply is huge.”
Spices have a long history as germ fighters—especially food-borne bateria. To read more, see “Darwinian Gastronomy: Why We Use Spices,” by Cornell University scientists Paul W. Sherman and Jennifer Billing in the June 1999 issue of Bioscience, Vol. 49. No. 6, pp. 453-463.