 Yogurt (one with granola, one without) and strawberries with WikiCell casing. Credit: Phase one Photography |
We鈥檙e on the brink of ice cream season. That鈥檚 happy news for those of us addicted to the creamy deliciousness in a cone. And for Harvard scientist David Edwards and his team, that means the release of their latest venture (or adventure, depending on how you see it): ice cream in an edible chocolate skin that doesn鈥檛 melt, no additional packaging required.
According to an story about the food and its inventor, this is not Edwards鈥 first foray into digestible packaging. Edwards used a grape鈥檚 outer casing as muse, and in an ultimate example of science mimicking nature, created WikiCells, 鈥渘ovel edible forms for eating and drinking transportable foods and drinks without plastic,鈥 he writes in a talk abstract on the subject.
The WikiCells are comprised of natural food membranes attached by electrostatic forces. They contain 鈥渁 liquid, emulsion, foam, or solid food substance鈥ithin an edible or biodegradable shell.鈥 In laymen鈥檚 terms, that means no unnecessary plastic packaging, something the accounted for 14 million tons of waste in 2010.
To date, Edwards鈥 team has experimented with varying fruits and vegetables, like a gazpacho-holding 鈥渢omato鈥 and a wine-filled 鈥済rape,鈥 reports . Edwards describes his product to API: 鈥淚t looks like an apple, looks like an orange, looks like a pear, but you can actually pick it up and wash it and stick a straw in it and drink the apple juice or the orange juice and the pear juice.鈥
He鈥檚 also done other cool experiments with food, like the inhalable chocolate he released in the late-2000s aptly named and the , which copies the way a biological cell transports water.
To me, Edwards鈥 stuff has the feel of molecular gastronomy鈥攖ricking the senses with liquid when the expectation is, for example, a solid鈥攂ut with an environmental bent. I experienced something like this in Spain, when I ate a 鈥減acket鈥 of seafood bath salt. It looked inedible, but the outer wrapper simply melted in the mouth, leading to the prawn-flavored powder. It鈥檚 kind of a strange sensation, leaving nothing behind but the delicious aftertaste.
Edwards plans to release his ice cream and edible packaging in France this summer. And if his taste-testers are anything like the ice cream lovers I know, they鈥檒l be happy to have nothing left but the taste on their tongues.