There are a few techniques for getting the last few drops out of the ketchup bottle — storing the bottle upside-down, repeatedly hitting the "57" on the Heinz bottle logo — but none works as impressively as LiquiGlide, a new food-safe, slippery coating developed by a team of scientists at MIT. When it's used on the inside of a condiment bottle, ketchup and mayonnaise magically slide out, as you can see in the video demo below.
The developers see LiquiGlide as a way to reduce food waste, estimating that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year if every condiment bottle used the coating. They say the biggest challenge was using only FDA-approved, food-safe materials, although we imagine some consumers will still be leery of a coating described as "kind of a structured liquid — it's rigid like a solid, but it's lubricated like a liquid."
• Read more: MIT's Freaky Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing at Fast Company
What do you think? Would you buy a bottle of ketchup with this coating?
Related: Make or Buy? Tomato Ketchup
(Image: Baevskiy Dmitry/Shutterstock)
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Really? This is the sort of "problem" our scientists are spending their talents on? THIS is the sort of" problem" that has a higher priority than all others?
Oh an by-the-bye: How long will it be before we learn LiquiGlide is harmful?
People don't seem to get that this is a physics problem that is relevant for its discovery of new concepts. Physicists aren't qualified to cure cancer, folks.
They also said teflon was safe for cooking...
I think I'll stick to a regular glass container...pun intended.
Pretty cool!
I call shenanigans. Maybe my Pittsburgh is showing, but waiting for your Heinz ketchup is just a part of the game.
Food waste in our country is estimated to be 38millions TONS!! 20%-25% of that is food purchased for the home and 50% of that (food purchased for the home) is in the purchase package when it is tossed... I think we need to stop buying so much and using what we buy before we buy more. If this product is safe and uses materials that have already been vetted, then I say go for it.
The food service industry is the worst. Huge portions, huge waste and no conscience about mother earth.
I agree about the product in general. My high school physics teacher taught us to smack the shoulder of the bottle. Trust me, it works. In fact, a warning: it comes pouring out really really fast. No weird chemicals needed.
Yep... Agreed. Anything that eliminates food waste is a good thing. That food doesn't break down properly stored in the bottle like that. I do have one concern, though; what does this coating do during the recycling process? It should break down if it's food safe, but sometimes certain coatings destroy batches of recycling.
Why not just use a splash of white vinegar, shake up the bottle, and voila? Sure it's a little bit runnier than the rest of the stuff in the bottle, but if you mix it with the ketchup that already came out, it's not bad at all. I'll pass on the chemicals.
I'm sure this "chemical" is really healthy for us as well. The USDA is always looking out for us, aren't they.
What a joke.
I'm usually hypersensitive to extraneous chemicals in food, but as I spent a ridiculous amount of time this morning scraping the last of the mustard out of the jar, I think I'm in love with this concept. Plus, I agree with Emmi - I'm sure that the people at MIT are thinking of other potential applications than just your ketchup bottle.
Yep - it says right in the original story why this is important to things other than ketchup bottles and why MIT labs are spending time on them:
"We were really interested in--and still are--using this coating for anti-icing, or for preventing clogs that form in oil and gas lines, or for non-wetting applications like, say, on windshields," Smith says.
Keep the 'empty' container until you've used a little from the new. Put a little warm water into the 'empty' mustard/ketchup/mayo jar. Shake and stand on its lid for a little while. Add it to the new bottle. Job done.
I want this to be perfectly safe and I want them to shop it around to the breast pump industry. I also want my own little bottle to apply to the pump I already own. Seriously. This would have eased the anxiety and guilt of being a "mom with low output" so much.