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For many years, scientists have been researching the effects or benefits of food on the state of mind, but also on the physical plane. It was under the latter premise that, at the end of 2024, one of the most curious news stories of the year hit the internet: the recipe for nanopasta, the world’s thinnest spaghetti, which could one day be used to dress wounds.
As one of the most abundant natural polymers, starch has attracted interest in many applications, from biofuels to cosmetics to papermaking,’ the researchers write in the new paper in the journal Nanoscale Advances. ‘Beyond these uses as an additive/precursor, the assembly of starch into bulk materials is promising, particularly as nanofibre membranes that can be used for nanofiltration, carbonised supercapacitor electrodes or a range of biomedical applications.’
Can it be eaten?
The reality is that it is not. The nanopaste is a strand of tungsten disulphide so thin that it is two hundredths the width of a human hair. Therefore, both its composition and its size require a microscope to see it. It is made from a mixture of formic acid and flour, which differs from paste in that instead of kneading and cutting it by hand, an ‘electrospinning’ technique is used to thread the flour through the top of an electrically charged needle.
The future of nanopasta
According to researcher Beatrice Britton, nanofibres made from starch hold promise for the medical field, as they ‘could be used in bandages to help heal wounds, as a scaffold for bone regeneration and for drug delivery’. However, Britton pointed out that because the fibres rely on starch that is extracted from plant cells and purified, it requires a large amount of energy. A more environmentally friendly method is to create nanofibres directly from a starch-rich ingredient such as flour, which is the basis of pasta.
