My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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Three-D food printing is the latest culinary frontier where technology meets everyday life
I myself am barely able to use an Allen key, but I've always been fascinated by new tech. I can still remember the buzzing sound the first time I ever connected to the internet, and how it signalled a change in the way I looked at the world. But what I remember most is that my first computer was supplied with a printer.
I was over the moon! Now I could print anything I wanted, whenever I wanted, without the bother of going to one of the few shops in town that had a photocopier. I thought that being able to print things at home was the business. That is, until I opened a catalogue and saw a 3D printer.
3D printing, a.k.a. Additive manufacturing, works by printing any three-dimensional object layer by layer, based on a digital file.
This new technology has unleashed our creativity in ways that were impossible up to now. We can create three-D objects from plastics, metal and other materials. The sky's the limit – literally, since you can also print out parts to make a model aeroplane. And all from the comfort of our own homes, or more likely, our garages.
Now there's a new frontier opening up in the culinary world: printing food.
Commercial bakeries and confectionaries find that using three-D food printers saves both time and effort. Herve' Malivert, director of food technology and culinary coordinator at the International Culinary Centre, has pointed out how democratising this technology can be: “With a 3D printer, you can print complicated chocolate sculptures and beautiful pieces of decoration on a wedding cake. Not everybody can do that, it takes years and years of experience, but a 3D printer makes it easy”.
What the new technology makes possible in food and food distribution has been explored by the “3D-Printed Restaurant Food Ink”, which used commercially-available three-dimensional printers to create everything from the furniture to the crockery on which the three-D-printed entrees and desserts were presented.
Having started out as a way of creating fancy shapes, three-D food printers are now being used to solve problems in food production costs and medical nutrition. The latest thinking in the food industry is that three-dimensional food printers could improve the nutritional value of meals, and could even help fight famine in locations where it is normally difficult to provide fresh and affordable ingredients. By the year 2050 the global population is expected to rise to 9.6 billion. Food production will need to have risen by 50% by then just to maintain current levels of nutrition. Joseph F. Coughlin, founder/director of AgeLab at MIT, thinks 3D printers could help reduce fuel use. In the future, he thinks, grocers might stock 'food cartridges', intended to last years at a time and reduce transportation.
One use of food printers is in the preparation of gluten-free food. Anybody involved in its preparation knows the main problem is the risk of cross-contamination, especially in kitchens that also produce non-gluten free food. A simple idea has solved the problem.
An Italian company called WASP (World Advanced Saving Project) has created a 3D food printer dedicated to producing celiac food.
These kind of food printers are now being used to create food for people with special dietary needs, for example people suffering with dysphagia. This illness causes difficulty when swallowing food, and many sufferers can only manage meals that have been mashed into a pulp.
Sufferers often develop an aversion to food due to lack of variety and its unappetising appearance. Researchers, investigating how three-dimensional food printers could improve the lifestyle of dysphagia sufferers, found that the new technology could really enrich mealtimes. Not only was preparation made easier, reducing the level of cooking skills required to puree food, but also three-D printers created a more visually appetising meal.
I know some people out there will be raising an eyebrow right now over the idea that a machine could 'create' food. They may fear we're in danger of losing the 'culture' that surrounds the preparation of food, and that machines will iron out the diversity that food preparation can achieve.
I don't believe this is true. Before the internet, nobody thought it might be possible to communicate and share information instantly. 3D printers are currently showing their potential in fields such as medicine, where they are being used to create artificial human parts. I foresee that one day soon, three-dimensional food printers will occupy a space on our kitchen worktops, right next to the toaster and the kettle.
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AuthorI love cooking, and when it comes to quality I'm quite fussy. Archives
February 2018
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