[Editor’s note: Watch the video here.]
“We use food to preserve food,” [Apeel Sciences CEO James] Rogers said.
They start with organic material like frozen grape skins. They extract certain food molecules and mix them up in different combinations. The resulting powder, called Edipeel, is mixed with water and sprayed on fresh produce.
“When it dries, it leaves behind the imperceptibly thin barrier of plant material on the outside of the produce, and that thin barrier slows down the rate that water gets out of the produce and it slows down the rate that oxygen gets in. And by doing that we can naturally preserve the life of fresh produce,” Rogers said.
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“Each kind of produce has different characteristics,” Rogers said. “We can get extensions anywhere from twice the shelf life of a piece of produce to five times the shelf life of a piece of produce.”
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The product is FDA approved, and the thin layer it leaves behind is edible and tasteless. It would replace the wax that is often used on grocery store produce.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: How organic material is being used to extend shelf life of fresh produce