New type of convenience food--vegetable paper leading healthy food packaging

At present, edible paper has become a new research hotspot in the world. Its products are not only used for UN relief operations and US military operations, but also can be used in many fields such as convenience snack foods and edible packaging. This new type of convenience food will have great market potential in the future.

Vegetable paper, also called paper dish, was first developed by Japan. The common characteristic of vegetables and foods is rich in dietary fiber, multi-vitamins and minerals, among which dietary fiber is quite stable in processing and production. Therefore, the nutritional loss of processed vegetable paper products is very small, and the product moisture content is small (about 10%). Easy to transport and store. This not only increases the added value of vegetables but, more importantly, solves the problem of vegetables that are perishable and difficult to store.

At present, only Japan has achieved large-scale production of vegetable paper. In terms of production technology, there are mainly two methods. The first method is a compression molding method in which the slurry is laid flat on a forming plate and is subjected to two baking moldings. Another method is a roll forming method, that is, the slurry is directly pressed into a shape via two counter-rotating press rolls, and is dried after being sliced ​​to obtain a finished product.

Vegetable paper products have high nutritional value and are easy to store and transport. They are a kind of good snack foods and advanced food packaging materials, and they have great market demand.

Due to the great market potential of vegetable paper, China's research on vegetable paper products began several years ago. Based on foreign research, many new ideas and methods have been proposed for the research of process and molding equipment. However, the overall level of research is still low, research is limited to the design of process tests and equipment, and has not really taken into account all aspects of industrial production. Therefore, the industrialization of vegetable paper has been lagging behind in China.