3-D-printeD fooD will solve our Dietary woes
The Star Trek replicators of the future will deliver foods customized to our nutritional needs
the burgeoning field
of 3-D food printing has already produced perfect cylinders of sushi, rounds of pizza dough and mini Eiffel Towers made of chocolate. But when 3-D printing expert and U of T professor Matt Ratto thinks of food printing, he thinks of Pringles. The stackable chips are made with a distinctly unchiplike potato slurry, which is baked in a mould. According to Ratto, all 3-D-printed food will start the same way.
Any 3-D printer, whether it’s making food or prosthetic limbs, must use materials in a liquidy form at the exact right consistency, whether it’s pizza sauce, pancake batter or melted chocolate. As the printing head moves around in the machine, ingredients are squirted through one or more nozzles, not unlike a glue gun. All this is usually happening inside a heated chamber or on a surface that’s similar to an oven or a hotplate. Usually, the food is baked (or cooled) as it’s being printed—allowing for the creation of complex, elaborate shapes and layers. Other times, it’s formed in a powereddown oven-like appliance, ready to heat later at the touch of a button.
Because the process is slow and expensive, says Ratto, it’s currently serving a niche market. But he can envision a future where that niche grows wider, changing the nature of home cooking—and food itself—just like the microwave once did. Currently, food consumption relies heavily on mass manufacturing, and the idea that everyone’s nutritional and dietary needs are the same. Now imagine a future in which you can easily and automatically produce meals precisely calibrated to your body’s requirements, right down to an exact balance of carbs and proteins. The same goes for highly specific food allergies, like an intolerance to the carbohydrates found in certain fruits. “As we learn more about how people’s bodies respond to foods,” says Ratto, “3-D printers can provide highly customized options”—in whatever shape you want.