Mardi develops food packaging materials that can be eaten

GEORGE TOWN: Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) research team has successfully developed a food packaging material that can be eaten together with the food it contained.

Research officer from MARDI Food Science Technology Research centre Dr Siah Watt Moey said the research project started way back in 2012 with her team which also has another research officer Zainah Adzaly and assisted by three assistants.

She said after a year of working on the project, the team managed to produce edible films for food packaging that were environment friendly.

“We have developed a few type of materials from different raw materials such as seaweed, tapioca starch, sago, chitosan and rice which can be used as alternatives to conventional plastic,” she told reporters here yesterday.

She explained that these materials could be eaten together with the food it contained and if not consumed or simply thrown away, it would dissolve completely in hot water.

“Compared to conventional plastic which takes hundred of years to degrade...these films dissolve completely in hot water in less than a minute,” she said.

She said now her team had developed materials that could be used as sachet for instant coffee or tea, seasoning powder for instant noodle, candy and breakfast cereals.

However, Siah said the films could be further improved by adding colour or flavour to give additional nutrients to value add the films. She said currently the films were only produced in lab scale for internal use.