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Lunch in the form of a nutritional capsule? This is still a long way off, although such attempts are already being made. An even more interesting concept is food from a 3D printer. Doesn’t sound safe? Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Food is not created out of thin air, but with the right material, amazing forms can be achieved.
Food from a 3D printer
The kitchen is a place that everyone knows, and which often earns the title of the very heart of the home. It satisfies our needs at least several times a day, and to facilitate this process we have various kitchen equipment at our disposal. At this point, however, the term food processor takes on a deeper meaning, and a great example of this can be found in the Parisian restaurant Pazzi, where the chef is a machine. If such a solution has a purpose, how about extending culinary with other devices, such as 3D printers?
In general, 3D printed food can also be defined as “a meal prepared by an automated additive process”. The definition is quite abstract, isn’t it? Let’s think of the pizza vending machines that appeared in 2015. In them, the dough is prepared, extruded, topped with tomato sauce and cheese, and then sent to the oven – all within the workings of a single, clever machine. In a way, this could be considered a primitive 3D food printing process.
By 2021, we already had exclusive 3D printing restaurants and dozens of food 3D printers on the market. The rapid development of technology and public interest has brought increasingly heard claims that soon every home kitchen will be equipped with its own 3D food printer. In reality, 3D printed food is still in its infancy and has a long way to go before it is more widely adopted by professionals and consumers, but that doesn’t stop us from admiring these fascinating machines and their intriguing edible designs. We’re already hungry!
Food printing – how it works?
3D food printing works in a similar way to printing filament on a regular FDM 3D printer, in that a viscous material is applied to a surface to create the final object. Most commonly, the raw material is fed into a straw-like container and extruded while a nozzle moves to ‘follow the shapes’ of the final form and create 2D layers one by one.
While there has been research into other additive processes such as binder jetting and SLS using powdered food products, it remains questionable whether these processes are viable for food printing.
Let’s create a clear distinction: food 3D printers are mainly suitable for creating complex shapes and patterns, not for cooking ingredients. After the 3D printing process, products are not always ready to eat, but they can be cooked using an oven or grill, for example.
There are glorious exceptions. The PancakeBot is a machine that only makes pancakes by squeezing the batter directly onto a hot plate. You still need a person to flip the pancakes, but everything else is done using the same equipment. There is also the Cocoa Press 3D printer that uses chocolate, and this year the MyCusini series also joined the ranks of the chocolate 3D printers, about which an article was also written.
First industry, second food in 3D
Neither standard software nor a 3D printer optimised for the specific challenges of printing food yet exists. As Jonathan Blutinger of the 3D printing research team at Columbia University noted, “we use industry software designed to print plastic and metal parts, and we use little hacks to make it work.” The industry needs to gather standardised digital recipes that home cooks could download and use in their 3D printers, just as makers can download designs for plastic toys or tools as 3D printing files. At the moment, a 3D-printing chef who wants to create carpaccio with garlic and sage glaze or beetroot and walnut cream cheese would have to painstakingly develop a recipe from scratch – because not only does it have to be tasty, it has to be feasible.
It’s not hard to see that, for the time being, 3D printed food is more about transformational magic. After all, it’s no different in traditional cooking – it’s all about combining ingredients and applying heat properly. The novelty of 3D printing food would be even more momentous if engineers managed to figure out how to print and process at the same time. If we remove induction cookers, ovens and… 3D printers from the whole equation, we can see that we are still facing practices known for at least some 2000 years.
3D printing out of dough
The internet is reporting architect, artist and chef Dinara Kasko into the race for 3D printed treats. The Ukrainian chef cooks alongside some of the world’s best confectioners and has over 500,000 fans following her every project on Instagram – but until recently, baking was just her hobby. “I realised that baking and confectionery were much more interesting to me than architecture. Time passes so quickly when I’m sitting in the kitchen thinking about cakes, moulds and recipes,” she says in an interview with the SBS Food website. Amazing recipes and photos of cakes, candied works of art really work up an appetite, we don’t advise browsing through them with an empty fridge!
Filaments and food contact
A brief word on the twin topic. We will come across an interesting detail in the specifications of some filaments. It is gratifying to see that their manufacturers are increasingly pointing to the advantage of safe contact between 3D printing filament and food. An example is this Fiberlogy filament. The filament is non-toxic and objects printed from it can come into contact with food. 3D prints of this kind will work great as food containers, for example.
And from slightly further alternatives that are difficult to classify, there is 3D printing’s distant cousin in the context of food creation – vacuum forming (thermoforming) and the Mayku Formbox, with which you will discover your talent as a confectioner and more.
