You have possible heard the term, “eat your water†before, but that generally refers to eating water-rich fruit and vegetables such as cucumber, iceberg lettuce, celery, radishes, tomatoes, green peppers, watermelon, star fruit and strawberries, amongst others.
Other water-rich foods include reduced-fat dairy products, such as yogurt and cottage cheese; skinless chicken and turkey breast, fish, shellfish, and tofu, as well as soups, which consist mainly of water.
What we are talking about today however is not any of the above; we are talking about Ooho, the brainchild of Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez and Pierre Paslier. The pair wanted to create a natural alternative to plastic bottles, as millions of tons of them end up in rivers, lakes, oceans and landfills every year, where they will lie for at least the next 700 years before they decompose.
Their company, Skipping Rocks Lab, has come up with an innovative idea using an edible, seaweed-based membrane that holds water. Paslier’s background is mechanical engineering and Gonzalez’ is architecture, which makes for strange bedfellows, but somehow these two have made it work. Skipping Rocks recently launched a funding initiative through Crowdcube and raised £850,000 in a mere 72 hours.
Their goal isn’t to add another brand of water to an already crowded market but instead to offer a new packaging technology. They foresee provide the technology to various chain stores so that they can produce Oohos on the spot.
Eventually there could be a range of products made from the seaweed; a thin-membrane option perfect for runners in a race for instance, and a thicker-membraned one for the retail market.
A group of 3 to 10 Oohos can be encapsulated in a peelable skin, just like an orange. The material is transparent but can be coloured to differentiate the peel from the core. One can then just peel off an Ooho and pop it into one’s mouth, and either eat the membrane or discard it.
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