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Help for ketchup bottles? Slippery coating developed by MIT student

(CBS News) A new slippery coating developed by an MIT student may soon take the frustration out of finishing a bottle of ketchup.

PhD candidate Dave Smith and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been working for the last two months developing LiquiGlide, the coating made of nontoxic materials that can be used in food packaging. But it looks like condiment bottles might be the first application of the material.

(Watch the product at work in the video below from LiquiGlide.)

Smith, quoted in Co.Exist on Fast Company, said the coating could reduce food waste in a big way. He said, "It's funny: Everyone is always like, 'Why bottles? What's the big deal?' But then you tell them the market for bottles - just the sauces alone is a $17 billion market. And if all those bottles had our coating, we estimate that we could save about one million tons of food from being thrown out every year."

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