The days of cooking food using traditional methods will soon be over, as 3D printers will soon take over this department, too.
The list of 3D printable things expands each day. Researchers have already made the switch from polymers to liquid metals for this process, and other materials are sure to follow. Spanish start-up Natural Machines developed Foodini (I just hope CBS doesn’t have a problem with it, as this network used to run a children’s television series under that name), which just like Houdini makes things appear out of nowhere.
One of the cofounders of Foodini, Lynetta Kucsma, revealed that initially, Foodini was meant to print more than just pizza. In particular, 3D printing sweets seemed a good idea, but in the end, the developers came to their senses and decided make something even better, a 3D pizza printer: “I couldn’t justify pushing a machine that only did sweets with the obesity epidemic that’s going on. It had to also be able to produce, natural healthy food.”
It would be great if Foodini could also cook the food that it’s putting into shape, but as Kucsma explained, “It’s not meant for everything. The best to think of it is as an assembly device because it doesn’t cook food, it just keeps it warm. We’re looking to take the rote and repetitive tasks out of cooking—hand-wrapping ravioli, for example. It’s a timesaving device for people who want to make their own food in the kitchen.”
Food printing is not that new of an idea, some thinking that this process could be particularly useful for astronauts in space. There are others, though, who think that 3D printed food, while looking good, may not have a palatable texture. Even Kucsma admits that she had thought the same in the beginning: “I had an initial ‘ick’ reaction too when I first heard about it. But eventually people realize that its not Soylent Green, it’s just fresh food you make at home and that ‘ick’ factor dissipates. We thought about creating a new verb for what we were doing and disguising the whole 3-D printing aspect, but we decided to really just own it.”
Writing messages on pizza, sandwiches and other foods would become a lot easier with such a 3D printer, as demonstrated in the above video.
If you liked this post, please read about cloth printing at home and the liquid metals that give 3D printing a twist.
