We've all got a ketchup bottle method, whether it's shaking the bejeesus out of it, pounding the damn “57” until our palms turn red or using a butter knife to scrape the stuff out. Or we opt for those squeezable plastic bottles, which become useless and gassy about three-quarters of the way through.
None of these options are great.
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But a team of masterminds at MIT may have the solution to all our ketchup woes. They've invented something called LiquiGlide, a “super slippery” coating made of nontoxic materials. When applied to the inside of food packaging, such as ketchup and mayonnaise bottles, the contents glide right out. The inventors estimate that if all bottles came equipped with the coating, it would save about a million tons of food from being thrown out each year.
PhD candidate Dave Smith tells Fast Company that LiquiGlide works because it's “rigid like a solid, but it's lubricated like a liquid.” All materials used in the patented coating are FDA approved. Smith is now trying to work with companies to get the product into real bottles so we can all dig into our fries with minimum stress.
The demo looks something like this:
Ketchup pouring out of a bottle with LiquiGlide:
As opposed to ketchup pouring out of a regular bottle:
Amazing!
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