USDA’s new answer to cutting food waste by 50%: Jelly ice

 "Jelly ice" stays just as cold for just as long as traditional ice with one key difference—it doesn't melt thanks to a gelatin membrane that traps water in its cube-like shape. Once chilled, the cube can be manipulated into any form. Here's the story about this amazing breakthrough technology

USDA’s new answer to cutting food waste by 50%: Jelly ice

Abigail Russ, Federal News RadioAugust 18, 2022

Halfway through an interagency goal to reduce food waste, the Department of Agriculture may have found the answer in a new way to keep food fresh.

An investment from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is paving the way for a new type of ice cube to revolutionize how industries and individuals keep food cold and curb food waste.

In 2015, the USDA, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration, set the country’s first-ever food loss and waste reduction goal, to cut food waste by 50% by 2030.

Jelly ice is just one component to reducing food waste. Since 2017, NIFA has invested approximately $123 million across 527 projects

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, created the cooling cube known as jelly ice — the plastic-free, non-melting, compostable, anti-microbial ice cube that prevents cross-contamination. And it’s reusable, too.

The researchers used nanotechnology to create jelly ice. It is protein-based and 90% water to create a gel that will keep its shape once it is no longer cold.

“Once it is freezed, it will keep the food — whether it’s seafood, vegetables, meat etc. — [cold] much longer than traditional ice,” Shoushan Zeng, division director of the Food Safety Division at NIFA, said in an interview with Federal News Network.

Jelly ice reduces emissions and achieves environmental regulations, too.

“Creating this ice cube minimizes a lot of waste from the production, to the supply chain, to the processing and to the table because you can use this new technology in every stage of the food supply chain,” Zeng said.

While traditional ice cubes consume energy to produce and cannot be reused when they melt, jelly ice cubes are reusable up to at least 10 times.

In addition to being cost effective and environmentally friendly, jelly ice extends the lifespan of foods, for example seafood, to prevent food waste and improve food security.

“[Jelly ice] uses minimal resources and does not produce wasteful materials to the environment. It cuts down the price for water ice and is usable for households [and] for retailers as well as throughout the food supply chain,” Zeng said. “It is [a] tremendous environmental benefit as well as keeping the food industry sustainable.”