Edible paper opened the door to health food packaging

Edible packaging is one of the important development directions of modern food packaging, especially health food packaging. Although China's packaging industry has recognized the important environmental and economic value of such packaging, as well as its huge market potential, but due to the limited technology and equipment, this packaging product is still very rare, the process and equipment of this new packaging materials There are fewer studies.

There are two kinds of foreign edible paper:

One is based on vegetables as the main raw material, the vegetables beaten, dried after molding; the other is the refinement of starch, sugar, adding other food additives, adopting a similar method to the papermaking process. From the application and development prospects, green products based on vegetables have more potential for development.

Vegetable paper was first developed by Japan and was also called paper dish. The common characteristic of vegetables and foods is rich in dietary fiber, multi-vitamins and minerals, among which dietary fiber is quite stable in processing and production. Therefore, the nutritional loss of processed vegetable paper products is very small, and the product moisture content is small (about 10%). Easy to transport and store. This not only increases the added value of vegetables but, more importantly, solves the problem of vegetables that are perishable and difficult to store.

At present, only Japan has achieved large-scale production of vegetable paper, its processing technology and equipment has entered the fourth generation, the highest daily output of up to 30,000 per production line. Japan's Sakai Institute of Physical Chemistry has successfully developed the extraction of protein from bean dregs into pure dietary fiber, which is then processed into edible paper. Others include fruit paper, vegetable paper and seaweed paper.

As far as the production process is concerned, there are two main methods:

One method is a press molding method in which the slurry is laid flat on a forming plate and is subjected to two baking moldings; and the other method is a roll forming method, in which the slurry is pressed through two counter-rotating presses. The roller is directly pressed into a shape and dried after being sliced ​​to obtain a finished product. Due to the great potential of the market, countries are actively conducting research on vegetable paper and its products.

Edible paper is a research hotspot not only in Japan but also globally. Its products are mainly used for the relief of the United Nations and military operations in the United States; they can also be applied to a wide range of fields such as convenience snack foods and edible packaging.

It can be foreseen that this new type of convenience food will have a great market.

In China, the research on vegetable paper products began several years ago. The relevant institutions of higher education, research institutions, and enterprises and institutions have already done a lot of work in this area. Based on foreign research, the process and molding The research of equipment has put forward many new ideas and methods. However, the overall level of research is still not high, in particular, research is limited to the design of process tests and equipment, and does not really take into account all aspects of industrial production. Therefore, the industrialization of vegetable paper has been lagging behind in China. Recently, there have been many media reports that vegetable paper products have come out in China. However, small-scale, workshop-style production simply cannot drive the development of the industry.

At present, the state gives great support to the development of deep processing of agricultural and sideline products. As a turning point, various research units and enterprises are also actively preparing to explore a new path for the production of vegetable paper.

Vegetable paper products have high nutritional value, are easy to store and transport, and are a good snack food and high-level food packaging materials, there must be a great market demand. Once the research and development of vegetable paper has formed an industrial scale, it will certainly have a major impact on the development of healthy food in China.