Edible Milk Protein Packaging

An edible plastic wrap made entirely of casein milk protein has been presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

The team hopes their edible plastic may someday lessen our dependence on plastic packaging.

Americans throw away about 33 million tons of plastic every year. Plastic is a popular material for food packaging because it is easy to form, shrink, and cheap to manufacture. A small part of the plastic is recycled, the rest remains in landfills, which takes about 1000 years to decompose. Therefore, it has become more and more popular to make packaging more environmentally friendly. One of these is casein packaging, a by-product of milk processing. The advantage of packaging is that it creates a better oxygen barrier for food than plastic packaging.

Wide range of application

The development team believes that casein packaging will find widespread use for portioned foods that can be eaten with packaging.

Some disadvantages

Milk allergy is one of the most common food allergies, according to the Mayo Clinic. People who are allergic to milk also experience a reaction to any casein or whey product. These allergies can potentially limit the use of casein packaging.

Casein packaging easily dissolves in water, so it must be isolated from water, moisture, which is why it is necessary to use secondary packaging.