Edible polymers???

Rita B. Flesh schrieb:

You think you are a joker, right? In popular usage polymers means plastics. Most people forget about biopolymers. Starch, cellulose, proteins and peptides are also polymers - most of them edible. DNA is also a biopolymer ...and edible. There is no life without them.

Cheers Volker

Yeah.. Chewing gum are polyesters....

Yo, Rolf. I remember this as a legitimate question a couple of times back when I was in Regulatory Affairs. My stock answer was that while the polymer may have FDA approval for food contact, we did not recommend eating them. Cases I remember where an extruder plastic part was coming apart and not discovered until after a lot of candy was made and feeding of scrap candy bars which may contain traces of wrappers to farm animals. Frank

coming apart, not also occur in regular food processing machines, thus mak= ing vegetables, meat, baby food, you name it, contaminated and therefor une= dible? Rolf

I believe it was an extruder gear made out of Delrin. Delrin was not one of my polymers but I was answering the question for absent Delrin consultant. When candy maker opened machine for cleaning, gears were falling apart and he wanted to know if candy was safe to sell. I couldn't imagine him wanting to sell candy that might result in a buyer's breaking his teeth on.

It may be "edible", but not "digestible", depending on the particle size...!

Frank wrote: