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Shape Changing

A friend I visited recently gave me a bit of her sourdough starter and I have been feeding and caring for it as I use it for simple baking projects at home. There is something incredibly satisfying about seeing a process work in my kitchen that goes back to 1500 BC. I have toyed with the idea of making my own pasta inspired by S an incredible home cook I know. He makes pasta and cheese from scratch and the taste is to die for. It's unlikely that I will ever get around to fresh pasta making but this article about shape morphing pasta caught by eye. 

"We were inspired by flat-packed furniture and how it saved space, made storage easier, and reduced the carbon footprint associated with transportation," said co-author Lining Yao, director of the Morphing Matter Lab at CMU's School of Computer Science. "We decided to look at how the morphing matter technology we were developing in the lab could create flat-packed pastas that offered similar sustainability outcomes." According to the team's calculations, even if you pack macaroni pasta perfectly, you will still end up with as much as 67 percent of the volume being air. The ability to make flat pasta for shipping that takes on a specific 3D shape when cooked is one potential solution.

The idea itself is not novel. There have been flower-shaped papads forever and no fancy technology is required. To bring this to pasta is nice parlor trick but not sure if the sustainability objectives will be so easy to meet if targeted to grocery stores. People would not be happy seeing how little of the product they are getting for their money and it's not even a complex shape that's worth the extra for. 

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