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The microwave is a magical invention that – for better or worse – has changed the way we prepare food. But we’re still a long way from the push-button, on-demand meals seen on The Jetsons(Opens in a new window) or the Star Trek(Opens in a new window).
3D printing might change that, though we’re not dragging our ovens out to the curb just yet. But additive printing that follows code is not much different than taking ingredients and following a recipe. So it’s no surprise that so many have tried their hand at creating 3D printers that make meals.
Printing food is pretty piecemeal, though. There have been a few printers that specialize in one type of food, but an all-in-one solution has been hard to find. That’s not to say that people aren’t trying. Later this week, funding closes on a Kickstarter campaign for the Foodini(Opens in a new window), a printer from Natural Machines that doesn’t exactly create a whole meal but helps cooks in prep and presentation.
Honestly, when it comes to cooking, we’ll take any assistance we can get. Here are a few 3D-printed food projects that we’re salivating over.
1. Pizza Fresh Out of the Printer
Astronaut food is fun to eat on Earth but probably the last thing astronauts want to eat when they return home. That’s why NASA has invested $125,000 in Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer which, so far, specializes in pizza. The printer turns out food basics like protein, starch, and fat and then an inkjet printer sprays on flavor and smell. Yum.
2. Sugar Cubed
3. More Meat, Less Moo
Eating real meat without harming animals? Modern Meadow is working on 3D bio-printing meat using animal stem cells secured through a biopsy from a living animal and grown in a cell culture media. “Right now we breed and raise highly complex animals only to create products that are made of relatively simple tissues,” company co-founder Andras Forgacs said during a TED Talk(Opens in a new window) (above). “What if instead of starting with a complex and sentient animal, we started off with what tissues are made of?” PayPal founder Peter Thiel has invested in the company.
4. Also Waiting on That Tacocopter
That it was named the Burrittob0t pretty much says it all. That it failed is not your fault. The Burrittob0t did not make it to Kickstarter and so you never got the chance to back (or sample the product of) Tisch School of the Arts student Marko Manriquez’s project. As far as we know there’s just the one prototype Burrittob0t that adds beans, rice, crema, salsa, and guac to a tortilla at the press of a button.
5. Melt-In-Your-Printer Chocolate
6. Presentation Is Everything
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/news/want-a-bite-3d-printed-food-is-ready-to-serve
