Tasty Clams. And a Delicious Clamshell Container.

With a hat tip to Grist, Fast Company brings us news of food packaging that will never clog a landfill: WikiCells, edible food packaging so delicious it might even become part of the seasoning of the food. The WikiCells project is the brainchild of Dr. David Edwards, a Harvard biomedical engineering professor and founding faculty member of the university’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. 

Here’s the recipe, in Edwards’ words: "The notion [of Wikicells] is that you are englobing liquid, foam, or something else in a soft membrane held together by food particles that are being connected by electrostatic charges to each other and to a small amount of natural polymer."

Okay, that doesn’t sound so tasty. Imagine that soft membrane, Fast Company suggests, in the form of “a tomato and basil membrane that houses gazpacho, a chocolate membrane holding hot chocolate, or an orange membrane containing orange juice.” And Edwards continues with his own mouth-watering menu choices: "You can imagine that the yogurt will have a fruity kind of membrane. It could be raspberry, cherry, blueberry. We make something that looks like mozzarella cheese, but when you cut it with a spoon it’s all yogurt inside.”

--Reed McManus / Photo by iStockphoto/Debbi Smirnoff