Researchers at University College London have achieved what celebrity chefs and Italian nonnas could only dream of. They created the world’s thinnest spaghetti. This culinary achievement, published in Nanoscale Advances, produced strands of starch nanofibers just 372 nanometers wide. It is invisible to the naked eye and is even smaller than some wavelengths of light.
Although “the world’s thinnest spaghetti” sounds silly, starch actually has important uses in medicine. For example, using nanofiber starch in bandages can help wounds heal by allowing moisture to pass through while keeping bacteria out. Instead of going through the energy-intensive process of refining their own plant cell starch to make it into nanofibers, these chemists decided that store-bought stuff was fine and made fibers directly from flour. I did. Their version of nanofibers was created with a process called electrospinning. In electrospinning, an electric charge draws a mixture of flour and liquid through tiny metal holes into threads just nanometers wide. Extruding through a die is literally the same way you would make traditional spaghetti to accompany Bolognese or meatballs, only on a much smaller scale.
Although much research is still needed before the product can reach the clinic, this is a step toward more sustainable starch nanofibers. And while I’d pay good money to watch a chef try to explain invisible pasta on a reality show, electrospinning is almost certainly going to be the center of attention for new molecular gastronomy. Co-author Professor Gareth Williams, from UCL’s School of Pharmacy, said: “Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s useful as pasta because it’s overcooked in less than a second before you take it out of the pot.”
