Ramen has always been a comfort food for me, but nowadays, I always seem to notice just how much plastic it uses - for the noodles, the spice packets, the vegetable packets, etc. In a busy world, it’s only natural that we’ve leaned toward convenience in our everyday lives, but this has led to huge increases in plastic pollution.
However, product design student Holly Grounds might have a solution to the ramen portion of this problem.
She has developed a dissolvable ramen packaging that contains all of the ramen’s flavoring and breaks down in boiling water to form a perfectly seasoned soup - everything you need for delicious ramen in one package.
The packaging is made of flavorless biofilm created with potato starch, glycerin, and water, and it contains herbs and seasoning embedded in the packaging itself, completely eliminating the need for multiple plastic containers.
Not only that, but Grounds’s version of the ramen is actually more convenient than typical instant ramen you’d encounter in the store - because everything is contained in one package, it actually takes less time to make since you don’t have to waste time opening multiple packets. Grounds has found that on average, her ramen takes 1 minute less time to make than plastic-packaged ramen.
Taste tests also found that the biofilm didn’t affect the taste or consistency of the noodles at all - altogether a simpler, easier, and delicious way to make our favorite food.
Grounds was inspired by late nights at Ravensbourne University London, where she ate ramen as a quick, easy energy source and noticed the irony between how an 8-minute meal produced plastic that would take decades to dissolve.
Unfortunately, Grounds’s dissolvable ramen packaging has not yet hit the market, but I personally am greatly anticipating the potential changes it could bring to the food market, and a future where we can eat the foods we love without guilt at their environmental impacts.
