Is 3D Printed Food The Future?

3D food printing is the process of manufacturing food products using a variety of additive manufacturing techniques. Is 3D Printed Food The Future?

Most commonly, food grade syringes hold the printing material, which is then deposited through a food grade nozzle layer by layer.

The most advanced 3D food printers have pre-loaded recipes on board and also allow the user to remotely design their food on their computers, phones or some IoT device.

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Updated: 1-9-2015

Taste Testing 3-D Printed Food

We sample a trio of machine-crafted confections—CocoJet dark chocolate, ChefJet tart blackberry candy and XYZ Printing butter cookies.

THE 3-D PRINTERS used to create everything from industrial prototypes to jewelry are coming to the culinary world.

In collaboration with chefs and companies like Hershey’s and Barilla, makers of 3-D printers are experimenting with chocolate, cookie dough, sugar and other ingredients that can be loaded into a printer.

The promise of these machines isn’t just mass production, but also an entirely different type of deliciousness. The printers can render ingredients like chocolate and pasta in shapes and textures that have previously been impossible to create.

Molecular-gastronomy pioneer Ferran Adrià has experimented with the technology; a Barilla-sponsored competition for 3-D-printed pasta designs yielded one that blooms into a flower when boiled.

Most food-capable 3-D printers are targeted at professional chefs and will likely cost thousands when they hit the market.

But what does the food taste like? At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, I sampled sweets produced by three different models. For all, I asked for seconds.

ChefJet Tart Blackberry Candy

Preparation: The machine prints layers of an ultrafine blackberry-flavored sugar that are coated with a tart syrup to harden the form.

Tasting Notes: Flamboyant and fruity, this thin-walled, almost crisp candy instantly breaks apart in the mouth and transforms into something akin to crushed-up Smarties.

Seconds later, it all acquires a gummy-bear-like texture. Very Willy Wonka.

CocoJet Milk Chocolate

Preparation: A rich tempered chocolate is squeezed like frosting from a robot pastry bag onto a plate, building the candy one thin layer at a time. Each layer is cooled rapidly so it maintains its structure.

Tasting Notes: Full chocolate flavor with a hint of anise. Crisp on the initial bite, but due to its unusually thin shape, the candy dissolves in the mouth quickly, delivering a lingering fudge finish.

XYZ Printing Butter Cookie

Preparation: Danish cookie dough is drawn in ornate loops, which are then baked in a standard oven.

Tasting Notes: Dry and crumbly (an ideal tea accompaniment), with hints of vanilla and buttermilk and a pronounced note of coconut.

Updated: 6-9-2016

What Are You Printing for Dinner?

The rise of 3-D printed food could touch all the ways we eat.

IN THE OFFICE OF HIS MANHATTAN catering kitchen, Peter Callahan watched intently as I ate a small chicken drumstick off a 3-D printed plastic “bone.”

He had one question: “Would you love it more if you could eat the skewer?”

Callahan, a celebrity caterer credited by Martha Stewart with inventing the bite-sized slider, bought his first 3-D plastics printer two years ago to wow guests at a holiday party. Today, he has his sights trained on printing the food itself.

He imagined drumsticks with edible bones; could they be made of celery? Blue cheese? Hot sauce? Callahan already makes an edible cracker spoon to use with caviar, but he envisions an entire line of cutlery, plates and menus that could be printed and consumed at parties.

He sees mini-milk cartons made of chocolate and Asian-style takeout boxes formed from wontons.

“People like new,” he says.

But when it comes to food, most of us still cook like cavemen, over fire. Kitchens are “the most primitive thing in our house,” says Hod Lipson, an Israeli engineering professor at Columbia University, who was a pioneer in the field of 3-D printing, and food printing in particular.

But soon, Lipson claims, we’ll be able to download and print dinner.

Food printers use powders (mostly sugar) or pastes (cooked or uncooked pureed meat, vegetables, grains). The most advanced models have multiple syringes, like printer cartridges, each containing a different ingredient.

The syringes extrude the ingredients layer by layer, allowing the printers to build elaborate, computer-generated shapes that would be difficult, if not impossible, to shape by hand or mold.

Currently, the food needs to be cooked either before or after printing. But scientists, including Lipson, are working on a printer that cooks as it prints.

Lipson made his name by printing robots (an early model made the front page of the New York Times in 2000). A few years later, his students at Cornell University were test-printing with whatever materials they had on hand, which, in a university setting, included Nutella and Easy Cheese.

Their edible creations soon overshadowed Lipson’s printed robots. Visitors to the lab “would only ask about the cheese,” he says.

Lipson’s early edible experiments, featuring purple cubes that tasted like broccoli with the texture of milk, were “crimes against the culinary world,” says a former student of his. Lipson started developing recipes with chefs at what is now the International Culinary Center, while his students worked on the hardware.

At a recent demonstration, I watched Lipson’s latest printer extrude uncooked goat-cheese polenta and honey-beet puree into something that resembled a delicate flower or jelly-roll slice.

The polenta was then cooked with a blowtorch; the beet was a burst of sweetness inside the stiff, tangy, smoky peaks—delicious, but no better than a non-3-D printed version would have been.

The printer’s elegant presentation has made it a potential game-changer in an unlikely arena: nursing homes and hospitals.

Problems with chewing and swallowing are widespread, but patients frequently reject hospital mush—the only thing they can eat.

3-D printing could produce elegant, edible dishes with nutritional value calibrated to individual patients.

Last year, scientists at TNO, a Dutch research institution, built a 3-D printer that served 100 such customized meals to 20 residents in a German nursing home as part of a €3 million study funded by the E.U.

On the other end of the culinary spectrum, high-end chefs like Callahan are starting to experiment.

At Enoteca, a two Michelin-star restaurant at the Hotel Arts Barcelona, chef Paco Pérez used a 3-D printer for a dish called “sea coral,” which featured a puree of sea urchin printed in the shape of a coral frond, topped with whole sea urchins, caviar, hollandaise sauce, an egg and a foam of carrot.

The printer was a prototype on loan from Natural Machines, whose co-founder Lynette Kucsma acknowledges that the word “printed” can invoke images of processed food. “I understand why people have negative reactions,” she says, but once people start eating printed food in restaurants, “it helps prove the concept.”

In a decade Kucsma imagines people scrolling through recipes on couches and printing dinner, making printers “a common kitchen appliance the way that microwaves are today.” The scientists at TNO dream bigger.

Their “moon target”? The Star Trek food replicator, says Kjeld van Bommel, senior consultant in food printing at TNO. There are some differences, he says, but the general concept—a device that creates specific dishes on command—could be achieved.

Dave Arnold, founding director of the technology department at the International Culinary Center, partnered with Lipson on early printing experiments but came away unimpressed.

“It’s not adding anything to the art of what I consider making delicious food,” he says. “When people say 3-D printing is the future of food—God, I hope not.”

According to Arnold, the printer’s vaunted precision is precisely the problem: The small nozzle size means that “if anything is in it that’s interesting—like pepper or garlic or herbs—it will clog.”

Most current models require that every ingredient be ground to small particles. “It’s good for fish balls,” Arnold says of the available technology. “I love fish balls. But fish balls don’t need to be shaped like Mickey Mouse.”

Updated: 12-28-2021

Laser Cooked 3D-Printed Meals are the Future of Food

Whatever your tastes are it is highly unlikely that many of you are using 3D printers to create your favorite meals. Still, anyone interested in the future of food can find technologists printing out snacks, from steaks to cakes, at the push of a button.

Now laser cooking has arrived and it is adding an entirely new layer of gourmet taste.

Trials at Columbia University are revealing how highly tailored food can be prepared using a 3D printer and cooked to a mathematically precise finish using infrared and blue light lasers.

Printers are able to lay down millimeter accurate food designs that are then heated and seared with pinpoint accuracy.

Columbia’s Creative Machines Lab team is hoping to build an automated digital personal chef to deliver flavors, textures, and nutrition to suit individual tastes.

So far their experiments with chicken have created laser-cooked samples that have the same flavor profile as conventional cooking, but shrink 50 percent less, and have double the moisture content.

“In fact, our two blind taste testers preferred laser-cooked meat to the conventionally cooked samples, which shows the promise for this burgeoning technology,” said project leader James Blutinger.

Creating software that would allow chefs to make their own designs – a Photoshop of food – is the next step. “We need a high-level software that enables people who are not programmers to design the foods they want,” said group leader Hod Lipson.

“And then we need a place where people can share digital recipes like we share music.”

Companies in the food industry regularly use ingredients injected into containers and molded into appealing shapes. But playing with food chemistry, texture, and processes like spherification, to create sweet or savory caviars, is often restricted to gourmet kitchens.

Now food printing and novel preparations are going mainstream. The world’s first 3D printing restaurant – Food Ink – has served up treats to diners direct from printer to plate.

Meat substitute companies combine digital modeling with printing to create different cuts of steak, and meat textures with fat marbling made purely from plant proteins and fats.

Sugar and sweet treats were among the first food printer ingredients to become a hit with home consumers, making food personalization – and snacks that can be quickly customized – a growing trend.

Miam Factory in Belgium 3D prints chocolate and laser engraves its macarons for customers. And now a crowdfunded chocolate printer will allow anyone to do it at home.

Or how about your own personalized 3D printed pizza? Well, it’s not all about printing takeaway foods and sugary snacks: personalized means getting the right nutritional content too.

That could be people with medical reasons for special diets, or athletes looking to maximize nutrients for performance.

Recreating nutrient-rich foods from a precise recipe should be as simple as sharing a file on the internet, say Columbia’s engineers.

Startup Anrich3D makes food printers that take data from medical assessments, health trackers and apps, and combines it to create individual meal plans based on ‘foodlets’ – rapidly printed ‘fast food’ that is cheap, healthy, and nutritionally balanced.

All of this could well change the way we think about and eat food. High on the list of positives is the fact that printed food can be healthier, lessen the environmental impact of food production – especially red meat – and cut waste.

Global food waste hit almost one billion metric tons in 2021. So emerging companies that turn food waste into tasty dishes and food decorations – like Natural Machines or Upprinting Food – are a welcome development.

As food printing becomes more widespread, we may see instant printed and recycled meals as the dietary solution we were looking for.

Updated: 2-28-2024

To Farm Or Fabricate? 3D Printing’s Role In The Food Industry

As food production startups begin commercializing 3D-printed seafood, some experts question the viability of the technology in the broader market.

3D printing has taken much of the manufacturing world by storm — and the food industry could be up next.

Manufacturers across the aerospace, automotive and energy industries are working to boost adoption of additive manufacturing among their suppliers and in their factories for its ability to alleviate supply shortages and enhance product customization.

Motivated by the technology’s potential benefits, Robin Simsa embarked on his journey to establish Austria-based seafood startup Revo Foods in 2020.

While working on his doctorate in cultivated meat, Simsa discovered an additive technology that could integrate a fat component into plant protein fibers to create more realistic meat alternatives.

“As often in startups, you have a new finding, you figure out there’s no industrial way to do it, and then you’re foolish enough to start it yourself,” the CEO said.

Revo Foods’ first product — 3D-printed salmon fillets — hit Austrian supermarkets last September, the first 3D-printed food to ever be sold in grocery stores, according to the company.

The startup already plans to scale production with its multi-nozzle system, which combines multiple print heads within a single piece of production machinery.

Revo Foods uses extrusion to manufacture its alternative seafood products, a common 3D printing process in which a material is squeezed through a nozzle in successive layers to recreate an object from a digital file.

The startup’s patented food printing technology lets it precisely combine its plant-based protein and fat ingredients, making its final products more authentic in terms of cooking and mouthfeel, Simsa said.

One of the earliest things the startup focused on achieving was a continuous extrusion process. “Normally, this is a batch process, and it’s very hard to think in terms of scale,” Simsa noted.

Although companies like Revo Foods are advancing in the realm of 3D-printed food, scalability remains a significant challenge.

“The largest obstacle for 3D printing to overcome is throughput,” said Edwin Palang, senior commercialization manager for food R&D firm Mattson. “When we talk to co-manufacturers, the first thing they ask [about] right away is volume.”

Palang underscored the efficiency gap between the technology and traditional food production methods, for example when making a hamburger patty.

The quickest he had observed a 3D patty get formed was in about two minutes, whereas conventional processes can churn out about 130 patties in that time.

However, Palang still believes 3D printing could have a place in the food industry, mainly for high-end products. This includes items that require complex shapes that traditional manufacturing can’t deliver, such as alternative premium meat cuts and highly marbled fish fillets.

“The benefit of 3D printing here extends beyond customization; it supports the creation of sustainable, alternative protein sources that closely replicate the taste and texture of high-end meats and seafood,” he said.

Consumer demand for seafood has skyrocketed in recent decades, with more than a third of global fish stocks overfished as of 2019, according to the United Nations. Revo Foods aims its product portfolio at bridging this gap, and it is not the only company to do so.

Since December, Israel-based food tech company Steakholder Foods has unveiled two 3D-printed seafood products: eel and shrimp.

The $4.3 billion eel market faces severe challenges like overexploitation and the threat of extinction, the company said in a press release, emphasizing the need for sustainable alternatives as demand continues to grow.

In a statement, CEO Arik Kaufman touted the company’s patented printing technology’s ability to reproduce the intricate texture of an eel on a potential scale of hundreds of tons a month at lower costs than harvesting wild eel.

The CEO also highlighted the process’ flexibility to make a range of printed products using the same production line.

“It’s a really awesome technology, but the thought that it’s going to take over and be equivalent to regular meat production is hard to imagine at this point.”

Jaime Reeves

EVP of Product Development and Commercialization, Mattson

As of now, however, Mattson’s EVP of Product Development and Commercialization Jaime Reeves said companies exploring 3D-printed food are focusing on products that already have a premium price point.

“It’s a really awesome technology, but the thought that it’s going to take over and be equivalent to regular meat production is hard to imagine at this point, from what we’ve seen and the people we’ve talked to in the industry,” Reeves said.

Still, Purdue Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ajay Malshe believes 3D-printed food could be scaled within the next decade.

“Additive manufacturing technology is, in my mind, at a commercial level for metals and polymers,” Malshe said. “A lot of those equipment design know-hows are being repurposed in the food industry.”

He suggested that incentives for food producers to adopt the technology could transcend the high-end market.

Using 3D printing, food producers could tailor the typically large footprint of their manufacturing plants to bring production closer to consumers by creating custom, modular food manufacturing platforms.

These would lower transportation costs and have the potential benefit of using local resources to create products, according to Malshe.

He also highlighted shifting consumer preferences as another driving force, particularly as younger generations become increasingly aware of the origin and quality of their purchases.

“The ‘where my food comes from,’ people do want to know that – they want the traceability of that,” Malshe said.

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