MIT’s Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing | Hacker News Reader

MIT’s Non-Stick Coating Keeps Ketchup Flowing

fastcoexist.com

190 pointsmikek105 comments

> "We had a limited amount of materials to pick from," Smith says. "I can’t say what they are, but we’ve patented the hell out of it."

Wait wait wait, someone needs to explain to them what the intent of a patent actually is.

I'm sure they've used some unique combination, treatment and application of those materials to create this effect.

Which is exactly what the patent is supposed to describe, in detail.

Take X, Do Y, Add special sauce Z. We have patented this method biatches, no touchies.

The point of a patent is that you must disclose the method in return for a limited monopoly.

It's to encourage the sharing of techniques!

So it is. Go find their patents and read them. Deduce what you can.

The spokesman is under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to make this easier than necessary. That is how the game is played. Nor is he a lawyer, or foolish enough to issue an off-the-cuff statement that undercuts the work of the actual team that has crafted the wording of the patents.

Ok, but why are you replying to me about this?

I was trying to address kondro's obvious confusion about mikeknoop's point, not pass judgement on anyone in the article.

When a patent is granted, or 18 months after its filing, it's published. Until that time there's no obligation to disclose and no attorney would ever advise it. If the USPTO should rule it not patentable, it could still be a very valuable trade secret.

Given the number of patents in existence at the moment and the complex wording, if someone didn't tell you what something was called you probably wouldn't be able to find their patent. Security through obscurity.

So maybe they've filed the application but have not received the patent/disclosed the invention yet? In the US, you have to prove that you were the first to invent something, not the first to file something (as in Europe), so the secrecy would make some sense...

It's worth noting that the US is switching to a first-to-file system early next year.

Perhaps this is ignorance, but I do not want this anywhere near my food. The FDA's said a lot of things are non-toxic over the years.

Knowing they FDA, they'll just ban companies from telling consumers whether or not it's in their products.

Because if it's a medicine you might actually want to use, it's illegal unless you have $100 million dollars to pay for testing. But if it's something that can make food corporations money, not only doesn't it need to be tested but it's illegal for you to even know if you're eating it.

Do you have an example of this already happening?

The obvious one is that it's illegal for food companies to advertise whether or not their products are GMO:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/18/fda-labeled-free-modif...

There are a lot of other food safety best practices that the FDA has effectively banned as well though. For example the movie Food Inc. explains the issues surrounding bacteria in beef.

While the regulation on GMO labels is evident, it's hard to decide whether GMO is good or bad, and whether it is right or wrong to encourage or discourage GMO.

Bacteria in beef is problematic to justify because the bad outcomes tend to be low-probability events, and the events can often be attributed to other causes, so it's hard to pin it down on food safety practices.

Try something more clear-cut, like the history of trans-fat regulation as compared to when the adverse health-effects of trans-fat were identified, and whether trans-fat was allowed as a food additive with compelling evidence for its safety (by appeal to long-term epidemiological data or otherwise). Trans-fat is also clearer because the government has encouraged (with marketing dollars) its consumption over other kinds of fat.

I'm sure there are many better examples than GMO labeling and bacteria in food.

So this is never going to fly then. Why would a food company use this coating at all? It's not in their interest - wasted food means more money for the company.

That was my first thought, too. A million tons of food saved = a million tons of food unsold.

Unless, of course, the bottles are so slippery that people inadvertently pour a lot more ketchup than they used to. That would be a million tons of food wasted = more money for Heinz.

> It's not in their interest - wasted food means more money for the company.

It's sick.

But I keep wondering - why no one in this industry seems to be trying to be good and use it as a marketing advantage? "We do not try to make profits on stealing from you by wasting materials and energy like everyone else out there". I'd definitely try to buy as much as I could from such company.

Capitalism at its best - it's all about profit and outsmarting the competition. There are companies out there that try to do the right stuff - organic food, healthy stuff, etc, etc. But they struggle. They struggle because 'the good stuff' costs more to produce, therefore they have to charge more. Whilst the 'bad' companies sell unhealthy stuff at a lot lower price, thus yielding better profits. Which in turn means better advertising, better position on shelves, etc. Society is not ready for the change yet. You would do the right thing, but I'm guessing 90% of population, just don't care.

I think you've been misinformed about organic food. It's not healthier, isn't necessarily better for the environment, and the profit margins are much higher.

Modern pesticides are not particularly toxic, but they are also not completely safe. They often break down into things like estrogen, so we know low doses are not going to kill you but they are still biologically active. Which set's up a cost benefit analysis of tiny positive vs significant cost.

Modern farming is more harmful to the area being farmed, but takes significantly less land to produce the same food which in theory means you can let more land go fallow (wild). As to profit margins farming in the US is only profitable though subsidy's so that's just a question of government incentives.

PS: Not that I actually shop for organic food, but it's not completely irrational behavior to do so.

I assume you assert that out of ignorance. Modern pesticides are extremely toxic in small quantities, some with immediate and easily observed effects, others with delayed and long-lasting effects.

Regulatory limits are often based on immediate observable effects. Delayed hard-to-observe problems tend to be ignored. See the toxicity of organophosphates and COPIND, and the history of its regulation (when regulations were enforced; when the upper limit was revised to consider the problems of COPIND). There are research results that suggest some Americans have a sufficiently high dietary intake of pesticides to affect their lives.

Furthermore, for many pesticides, there's no way for the policy makers and public to estimate its toxicity, because research is often suppressed, dissemination of toxicity information is often suppressed, policy change is often suppressed, etc. It's a well-established problem with the political-economy of America.

In many less-developed-countries, MNCs like Monsanto and Bayer have used aggressive and deceptive sales techniques and misrepresentation of product toxicity to persuade farmers to use pesticides far in excess (over 100 times the level of) of regulatory limits in the US. These products do get exported. Search for such news and policy discussions in India and China.

Lastly, pesticides don't "often" break down into chemicals similar, in biological activity, to estrogen. Pesticides can cause quick death, physical deformities in fetuses and young children, autism, epilepsy, mental retardation, cancer, organ failure, rashes, ulcers, can be used in biological warfare, etc. Some pesticides take decades to breakdown; Some pesticides have metabolites that are extremely toxic. Do refer to toxicity and metabolism research and data when evaluating the health risks of pesticide exposure and consumption, and/or consult an expert with little conflict of interest.

PS: Organic farm allows the use of (some classes of) pesticides as well.

I assume you assert that out of ignorance.

No, however I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume we have a vastly different view on what small quantities entails. You have farmers who are basically drenched in the stuff and then the general public who get's 1/1000th of those doses. Most of the time toxicity is not a linear relationship, feel free to go swim in a vat of phosphoric acid an ingredient in Coca-Cola Soda Syrup if you survive feel free to report back to me on what that was like.

PS: I was thinking about this after posting it, and the acid comment was over the top. I hope you took as the hyperbole it was intended as, but if not I would like to apologize.

My wife used to be on a team that managed Heinz ketchup. When I spoke to her about this, the decision analysis usually runs as follows: 1) Does this incremental improvement (i.e. non-stick coating) provide a distinct competitive advantage that is backed by clear and pressing consumer demand? 2) How much will it cost in terms of: i) disrupting/modifying existing at-scale manufacturing/bottling processes ii) fixed cost increase iii) potential liability

There is usually a laundry list of pressing consumer needs with associated costs, balanced against market share numbers (usually culled from Nielson data) and satisfying power distribution channel partners.

The non-stick coating is, afaik, not high on the list of consumer demands for Heinz ketchup.

Then why did ketchup companies start putting the opening on the bottom of the bottle?

Consumer convenience is a competitive advantage. Once people get used to slippery-coated bottles, they'll avoid products without it.

So do smaller containers for the same price. When you shop do you pay attention to how much usable product you're buying?

Call me cheapskate, but I always look at £/100ml part of the label.

I do that too (except it usually says kr/l or kr/kg here.). Sometimes I end up buying more than I need, though, because the unit price for bigger packets are that much lower. Doesn't mean that the packet will last me any longer, specially if it's chips, chocolate or fizzy drinks.

The ketchup is just a good demonstration. they can apply that coating to a million other things... Pipes, tubes... Take a smaller bottle, cover it outside and you got yourself a dildo. It's all about potential possibilities not "food" :)

So, let me get this straight. You will not have this near your food solely based on the fact that FDA has approved of it? That's crazytalk if you ask me.

I don't believe he's saying he would not use the product BECAUSE the FDA has approved it, but rather FDA approval has not always been the best indicator that a particular product is indeed safe.

This was posted in the comments section of the article:

>I'm Dave Smith, and I just want to clarify that we make the coating from materials that are not just FDA approved, but that we actually eat on a regular basis in much larger quantities than could possibly be released from the coating.

It sort of looks like the bottle has been coated on the inside with oil.

Because of the chemical similarities between oil and plastics, oil really sticks to plastic, creating a hard to remove oily coating on plastic surfaces. You really notice this effect if you have the joy of having to hand wash a plastic mixing bowl that has had oil in it.

I wonder if something similar is going on here? If they are eating this stuff already is the magic ingredient simply an edible oil?

[edit] readability.

Just use a little bit of detergent without any water. Scrub then rinse.

This effect could be achieved with a "standard" superhydrophobic coating (or superhydrophilic for oil-based condiments). Those can be easily done with something like a nanostructured silica film (without having to functionalize the coating with additional chemicals), and silica is a very common food additive (fumed silica is already added to ketchup in fact to alter its flow properties)

Nanostructures may be likely, considering the group's recent (but different) patent: http://www.google.com/patents?id=JBoFAgAAEBAJ&printsec=a...

The problem is that even benign materials can have unexpected outcomes that depend on their nano-structural properties. Carbon is safe, but carbon nanotubes can form cysts [1] and cause brain damage in fish [2].

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080520/full/news.2008.845.ht...

[2] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4825-buckyballs-cause-...

You're absolutely right -- there are some materials that would be very bad candidates here.

I was pointing out only that this can be achieved with structure only (no additional hydrophobic/hydrophilic chemicals), and that it can be done with materials that have already proven themselves inert when ingested in nano-scale particle sizes.

Out of curiosity, what criteria do you use to determine which food products are probably safe for your consumption? Do you do research yourself, or is there another source of research you consult?

There's a list of approved food additives for most developed countries.

I try to stick to food products that existed 200 years ago.

I wonder if they've tried painting this stuff on the underside of a boat?

Or, you know, use wax. The primary development here is creating something that can be approved by the FDA.

Lookup superhydrophobic coatings, they already exist.

The secret to getting ketchup out is to give it a good shake, then hit the heel of your hand "upwards" on the top of the bottle, near where the neck meets the body (on the 57 or not, doesn't really matter). The upward force is what counts, and it somehow gets the ketchup to come out relatively smoothly. Most people strike downwards, and that's why it doesn't work. If you don't believe me, try it! Learned this trick from my uncle.

I'm guessing the functional principle here is somehow related to vacuums, those pop-tops on the new Miller beer cans, etc.

I believe the physics concept behind this is:

- An object will remain in the same state of motion (or rest) unless acted on by a force.

When you hit up on the bottle, you are applying a force primarily to the bottle. The force is applied to the sauce inside to a much lesser degree, so it stays closer to a state of rest. Therefore if the bottle goes up and the sauce stays at rest, it has the effect of moving the sauce down to the neck of the bottle.

Ketchup is a non-newtonian fluid. This means that in low levels of force it's very thick - almost a solid.

But if you speed it up (for example by shaking), it thins out and pours like water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-newtonian_fluid

My "secret" is to hold the bottle in my hand and swing my arm in a large arc, using centrifugal forces to pull the ketchup towards the mouth of the bottle.

(With the cap on, obviously).

SCIENCE

the only problem to this method is when it slips and the bottle ends up in the neighbors window.

The solution here would be, to just be careful.

Sorry, but coming from Europe, we have a bit of an understanding, that products can't be responsible for the "dumb" use of their users.

If a bottle ends in the window of your neighbor, is it your fault or the bottles?

"when it slips and the bottle ends up in the neighbors window."

Or someone forgets to put the top back on properly and you end up redecorating your kitchen.

This reminds me of NeverWet: http://youtu.be/7is6r6zXFDc?t=17s

The chocolate syrup on shoe demonstration is quite compelling.

Isn't that basically ScotchGuard?

It's a cool demo but isn't practical because you'd never use a coating like that on clothing. It doesn't breathe which is pretty much the same as putting your feet in plastic bags.

Somehow, this just makes it not a ketchup experience for me any longer. I want the ketchup not to flow and to use my super powers to make them flow.

Makes me wonder if some things are meant to slow us down to enjoy them more, whether it's getting ketchup out of the water, eating more purposefully with chopsticks than wolfing down food, or thinking through a design before hacking.

From your profile ;-)

"Curiously, I'm always looking for a way to slay pain points, get more done with less effort for everyone, and build great experiences."

Haha, nice.

Ketchup that comes out on it's own is akin to a plastic squeeze bottle; already done.

"How am I going to impress my kids now?"

I know this is juvenile, but when I read the part about how this can be used as a spray-on coating, the first thing that came to mind was:

1. bored teenagers 2. bottle of transparent spray-on de-frictionizer 3. tens of thousands of miles of defenseless city sidewalk

Hmm I wonder if in the case of ketchup/condiments this will initially be less successful than we think.

Your going to have to get consumers to learn to not accidentally dump half the bottle out when turning it over and shaking it like you would with today's ketchup. This sounds easy but think of all the elderly folks eating at their favorite local diner.

I think the challenge may actually be in making it less slippery. If you can control that then over the next 5 years you could gradually up the slipperyness to make the learning transition more gradual for consumers.

Not sure if you watched the mayo video as well, but I think if all the bottles were squeeze-type, it would solve this problem pretty well.

Without the slippery coating though you end up with either that slamming motion or a toothpaste tube effect

I don't know. But Heinz found that mothers were rationing ketchup when they get near the end of the bottle. The solution? They made bigger bottles.

Apparently ketchup selling is a very subtle business.

Leave that to marketing :) "Heinz Quick-Flow Bottle" or similarly ludicrous name...

There are plenty of low-tech solutions that accomplish the same thing. For example: a ketchup syringe (but the "needle" end is wide, like those ends for decorating cakes with icing). Or a jar like a jam jar, which you can scrape out with a spoon. (Jam and ketchup are similar: mostly sugar, plus a bit of fruit.)

There's a reason Heinz and others don't go with containers that empty 100%: such containers last longer, keeping you from buying more ketchup. What they want is jars that hold on to even more ketchup. Patent that!

As said up-thread.. If you make it really slippery so that more ketchup comes out each time -- you also have a winner.

This is amazing. Now when I hit the ketchup bottle really hard forgetting it has a non-stick coating my plate can be covered in a whole bottle of ketchup thus making the ketchup company more money when I have to buy another bottle.

I like hitting the ketchup bottle to get the last bit of sauce out, especially when I do it for my girlfriend. Now what chivalrous activity will I have left to do for my girlfriend? What's next, easy open jars? our manhood is being taken away!

Too late, Duerr's have been selling them already. I was pretty impressed, they are genuinely easy to open. http://silvergroup.asia/blog/an-age-friendly-packaging-innov...

Manhood, fading. Must. Reclaim. Little. Manliness. Left. Ughhh!

I wonder if companies will embrace this as a boon to consumers or if they can actually quantify how much money they would lose because people can get all the product out. Also the article has no information on how much the coating costs, or what kind of changes to the manufacturing process you'd have to make (like having to store the bottles somewhere post-spray to 'dry' or something). I also wonder if, in the case of the open mouth ketchup bottle, it actually makes the experience worse for a full bottle by pouring out too fast?

In any case, it's cool and I'm actually excited for the other applications of it. Seems like an endless stream of cool stuff comes out of MIT.

If some company was smart, they'll lock in an exclusivity agreement for at least a few years, and advertise the hell out of it. VERY easy to make a TV commercials around the topic of not-wasting food and saving money - two big wins for advertising.

I came to post this, you beat me to it. I assume 4mls of ketchup might not be worth much per bottle, but in mass production it would account to a lot of lost money.

On the other hand you may gain customers to account for that loss.

Or they'll just reduce the quantity of food in the bottle in addition to marketing it as "easy-access" or "lower wastage" on the label.

If they do that, then their price/(qty|mass|volume) label, mandated in US supermarkets next to the unit price, will shoot up.

And? If that was really important, only those products with the lowest number would sell any units.

Interesting point. Realistically, Heinz would prefer that you didn't get all the sauce out, because you'll buy another bottle more quickly if some isn't accessible.

Perhaps the extra end-of-the-bottle amount would be offset by the ease of pouring causing people to use a little more than they expected each time

Am I the only one that is suspicious of the quantity of ketchup used in the examples? Why aren't there examples with a nearly full, or even half full container?

This would affect the dynamics enough that I would be interested in seeing what happens.

Its the remnants of ketchup and mayo that are the hardest to get out of a bottle. That's what the small amounts are demonstrating. You don't really have a problem getting the contents out of a full bottle.

I'll take your word for it since I don't have a bottle handy, but I am still suspicious. I have had issues getting ketchup out of a nearly full bottle because it's difficult for the air to flow back into the bottle as ketchup comes out.

Some of that effect will obviously still be there. Vacuum is not fixed by any coating and the liquid is viscous enough for bubbles not to easily form.

So yep, maybe it will need a tap or two at the beginning to make it flow.

If I were Heinz, why would I want this product? I'd rather people throw away the ketchup bottle with some of the ketchup still in it since that leads to higher sales for me. They're still paying me to throw that ketchup away.

This is what I thought, also.

This thing is very useful for consumers and the environment, but not for the companies that will pay for it. Unless customers are willing to pay more for a bottle with that coating I don't see how can you sell this.

Because someone else would do it, leaving your customers wondering what the fuck your problem is? Sneaky tricks to get your customer to needlessly waste your product so they'll buy more of it are bush-league bullshit. No one at Heinz will subscribe to your reasoning.

They might decide it isn't worth the cost, or that it could expose them to health-related lawsuits (I'm worried about that myself, there's "non-toxic" and then there's non-toxic), but no one would think this shouldn't be incorporated into existing products because people will waste a little less.

For the same reason a potato-chip company would make "sustainable" chip-bags out of special, thick, expensive paper, rather than cheap plastic: it gives them the cachet of being "organic" and "environmentally conscious" and "sustainable", which targets a market segment they might have been previously missing (though note that they only use said bags on their supposedly "healthy" baked chips--Heinz might do the same if they adopted this, making a special "eco-ketchup" with this tech and a different design.)

This somehow really drove home the opportunities some people have that others don't. The fact that such a competition exists at a university level for students makes me incredibly envious. I go to one of the highest ranking universities in my country and there is no such competition or even idea to push students to collaborate and compete at such a high level. I feel like I'm at a complete intellectual disadvantage to MIT students to a degree. How must people feel who didn't even have the opportunity to complete secondary school feel? The world might be flattening but it has a long long way to go.

I don't know. I think these sorts of competitions are actually becoming more and more common. I've read about other ones at various schools, and I think they even had some similar competitions at my school. I certainly remember advertisements for some sort of tech startup-geared competition as well as something similar focused on Bioengineering.

Maybe you just didn't hear about it at your school? The one at MIT and the Bioengineering one I saw here were both aimed at PhD students and Postdocs rather than undergrads, so that could be a factor as well.

I am already thinking of far better uses for this then ketchup.

How about spraying inside of fire hoses, pumps etc? The main benefit is the massive reduced friction. More energy efficient pumps, less wear and tear etc.

I would then extrapolate the idea of smooth flowing ketchup to air and wonder if this would reduce the drag caused by air if you coated your car in it etc.

No bugs sticking to your cars front window. Water and dirt don't stick to your paint etc.

And this is just after a few minutes of thinking of the potential uses for it.

Oddly, the two things I think of when I consider ketchup are Bob "Red Hat" Young's observation that "nobody really likes ketchup", and that it's a highly processed sugary paste. Haven't bought it in years.

Dittos mayo.

And watching either of them slither around in those non-stick bottles is kinda gross.

The slippery tech is pretty cool though, and I like the "hrm, try this on a boat" comment. Though ultimately hull-speed kills you there.

If this is for real it has major implications in the aviation industry. Icing is a major safety factor and grounds/diverts flights regularly. If you can get rid of the heavy, expensive anti-ice systems on aircraft with just a coating you'll get significant safety and cost savings benefits.

Wow, I was just thinking of this the other day. I was opening honey packets into my yogurt and thought that some super-hydrophobic coating would get all that honey out of there.

This is really cool - it would be nice to see it coating piping as well.

I think this would be great applied to bottles for personal care products like shampoo, conditioner, and hand lotion. I also wonder if they might be able use it to make a toothpaste tube you can get all the toothpaste out of...

Surprised no one mentioned NeverWet.

Seems like they just coated the inside of the bottle with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7is6r6zXFDc

Edit: Someone mentioned NeverWet. Never mind.

Ah, nothing like solving those pesky first world problems.

I have always got the plastic bottle of ketchup. For the final third you just leave it upside down. The ketchup pools by the cap. Fancy tech not required.

I'm curious if bottles using this coating will be recyclable. Reducing food waste is great, but if it's at the expense of recycling plastics or glass I'm not sure if there is a net benefit.

Somewhere in China, half a dozen factories have figured out how to copy this and are churning out at maximum capacity.

The real question is why didn't Teflon come up with this?

My guess is that this will be hard to commercialize, because that coating is going to need to resist being heated to X degrees without tainting the food.

yay more ketchup on my fries, while i forego the only exercise I get, which is hitting and shaking the ketchup bottle

I want it on my toilet so I will never have to scrub it.

Good stuff! Good to see these kind of news on Hacker News where real world problems are solved.

This can be really powerful marketing tool.

Another 1st world problem solved.

I would like to see this applied to the inside of engine oil bottles so that I'm not tossing out a few ounces of expensive synthetic every time I change my oil. Assuming it's inert and stable at temperature, I'd also like to see it inside the oil pan and oil galleys inside the engine.

First thing that came to mind was this gif: http://i.imgur.com/S9C9P.gif

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