It’s pretty common in America to give children cheese sticks in their lunch boxes. But from my point of view, it’s not eco-friendly. Each piece of mozzarella or cheddar stick is individually wrapped, like a high-end truffle. And every day, thousands of those little pieces of plastic wrap are thrown into the trash. Yet, there’s some hope for a change. Researchers from the U.S. have developed a special type of wrapping. This is a thin layer of film made from a milk protein that can be eaten with the cheese. It wouldn’t be the first wrap we can eat, but this would be more beneficial to health than the existing edible plastic where the main component is starch, not protein. The key element in the innovative packaging is casein, which is a group of milk proteins with high nutritional value. It is just slightly soluble in water and that made researchers believe it might be suitable for use in making a film coating. Also, if this invention is given the go-ahead, adding vitamins or minerals to the film would be possible. And since dry milk could be used to create the film, farmers would be able to put their surplus milk powder to use. Today when dairy farms are producing too much milk it’s dried to milk powder which is stored for years and sometimes even thrown away as there is little demand for it.

The casein film has been found to be significantly more effective at blocking oxygen than ordinary plastic wrap, so it is even better at preventing food from going off. Yet using the new film wouldn’t mean that all packaging would be eliminated. Cheese and other dairy products would still need to be covered in some way to keep the food from getting dirty.

The research team have now started working on different versions of the casein film. One of them might be suitable for a product you dissolve in water. In the future it could be used to contain instant coffee or soup. You could just drop a casein packet of ingredients into water where everything would dissolve. But some food companies might actually prefer a spray version of the product. One possible use of this would be to spray the protein film on breakfast cereal, which nowadays is generally coated with sugar to keep it crunchy. Since more and more customers are looking for sugar-free options, the new spray coating might be a breakthrough.