Food companies remain wary of pushing nanotechnology too far and too fast for safety-conscious consumers. But they are tantalized by nanotechnology’s capacity to create valuable and sometimes novel forms of everyday substances,like food ingredients and packaging materials.

OilFresh, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is marketing a novel device to keep frying oil fresh. OilFresh grinds zeolite, a mineral, into tiny beads averaging 20 nanometers across and coats them with an undisclosed material. Packed into a shelf inside the fryer, the beads interfere with chemical processes that break down the oil or form hydrocarbon clusters.