The world of cooking tech doesn’t exactly move at a lightning pace. The first gas oven was patented in 1826, with the first example of an electric version appearing before the end of the century, but the concept of putting food inside a heated box to cook goes back much further. The most recent major development was the microwave – and even that is over 70 years old.
“A revolution in food preparation could have huge implications for the way we eat”
In recent years, though, a revolution in food preparation has been simmering and it could have huge implications for the way we eat in the future. 3D printing is the process of creating three-dimensional objects from digital design files. It’s been around since the 1980s, but it’s only in the past 10 years that the necessary technology has become more widely accessible. Now even individuals and small businesses can afford 3D printers to create products and prototypes quickly and easily on a small scale. It’s already had a huge impact on the manufacturing industry and only looks like becoming more influential as edge computing becomes the norm.
In the world of food it’s still in its infancy – but there’s a mouthwatering future of 3D printing ahead. Various food-based 3D printers already exist, but many, such as Brill 3D Culinary Studio* and the Choc Edge*, just automate complicated decorative processes to save time and effort for their human operators. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, and any labour-saving measures are very welcome to those whose labour is saved as a result, but it’s not quite the Star Trek* replicator that many people might have in mind when they think of 3D printing their food.
Natural Machines’ Foodini* comes a little closer to that dream, using steel capsules filled with fresh ingredients to churn out oven-ready creations. And while they still need to be cooked, it demonstrates a lot of the basic benefits that 3D printing food can offer.
As well as taking some of the effort out of the preparation, the extra control afforded by automating the creation opens up a whole world of new possibilities around presentation. For many this might just be the ability to make their dishes look like they were sculpted by the hands of a top chef, but for parents it could have entirely different consequences. Kids are often put off eating healthily by the unusually-shaped vegetables on their plates but will happily chow down on something made to look like a dinosaur or one of their favourite cartoon characters. A 3D printer can take healthy ingredients and turn them into any shape you can imagine.
Of course, it’s not just youngsters that take the first bite with their eyes. 3D food printers can take previously unpalatable ingredients and make them entirely presentable. Food waste is a huge problem, with 13 percent of edible food and drink purchased by UK households going in the bin1. That’s only likely to have increased during the coronavirus pandemic, as people buy more in an attempt to make fewer trips to the supermarket.
Much of what gets thrown out is often perfectly edible but looks less appetising than when it was fresh. These leftovers can be used to create pastes for 3D printers, which in turn produce those aforementioned edible works of art, meaning less food ends up in the bin.
In a world where modern farming techniques are contributing significantly to our planet’s climate emergency, we also need to start looking at alternative food sources, particularly to provide the protein that usually comes from meat. Many populations around the globe have been eating insects as part of their regular diet for centuries, but Western countries have yet to get onboard with the habit. Many people are simply put off by the appearance of the beetles and caterpillars that over two billion people in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and South Africa regularly snack on. As with the kids and their greens, though, 3D food printers will make these kinds of ingredients much more palatable when they’re unrecognisable.
In fact, this control over ingredients is one of the key benefits of 3D printing food. With more and more people switching to gluten-free, dairy-free or plant-based diets, 3D food printers will allow more granular control over what goes into each dish. Combined with biometric and health data drawn from wearable devices, a 3D printer could prepare dishes with exactly the right balance of nutrients your body needs.
This kind of personalisation could be particularly useful in hospitals and care homes, where individual patients and residents require different meals and medication, but the food still needs to be prepared on a large scale. Being able to adjust the consistency and texture of meals could also make it possible to prepare dishes for those who have difficulty chewing, without reducing everything to a flavourless mush. 3D food printers would make all of this possible in a way that’s just not really viable using traditional food preparation methods.
Of course, there’s one part of the process that’s conspicuous by its absence so far: the actual cooking. Current food printers give you something that’s ready for the oven but still needs to be cooked, although companies are working hard to turn them into all-in-one machines using different-coloured lasers to heat the contents.
And that’s not all either. Others are exploring the use of 3D-printed, edible plates, cutlery and even furniture. So if you finish your meal and still have room for more, you could take a bite out of the table.
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others