food made with 3D printers

[DC Deb]

I read an item on the potential of "making" food with 3D printers. It makes me think of the replicators on Star Trek.

Just wondering--would you want to eat food made on a printer? Why or why not?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/3-d-food-printer-space/

[porcupine]

In answer to your questions, no.

"The Fab@Home team at Cornell University has developed gel-like substances called hydrocolloids that can be extruded and built up into different shapes. By mixing in flavoring agents, they can produce a range of tastes and textures."

Photography in its own right can be art, something I really came to appreciate after seeing actual prints made by Ansel Adams. But a picture (photo) of a painting is not a painting. I didn't think much of Georgia O'Keefe's work until I saw a lot of it up close, in person, and was able to see beyond the compositional and subject details to the depth, texture, true color, brushwork, and so on. The art was lost (on me) in reproductions.

A synthesizer is a fascinating instrument, and in the right type of music I like it - when it's being used as an instrument in its own right (by Keith Emerson, for example). A synthesizer trying to sound like a clarinet or violin does an amazing job of replicating the sound, but never gets it quite right. The nuance of a musician's playing is lost. The sound is too perfect to be real.

Strawberry flavoring does taste somewhat like strawberries, but there are hundreds of compounds that create that flavor in nature, and there are so many factors that influence how they come together, in what proportions, and then there's texture to consider before you even get close to replicating a strawberry.

No doubt chefs will be able to use this technology to create innovative, amazing, unique flavors and textures. But the result will never really be food.

[PollyG]

While I would have little interest in eating food "printed" from a bunch of chemicals, for a couple of years people have been using 3-D printers to work with sugar to create 3-D shapes that would be difficult to create in any other way. I see that one as having a potential application for specialized novelties and the extreme cake decorating industry.

http://wiki.candyfab.org/

There are actually 2 different approaches. The one in the video uses a nozzle, while the Candyfab, if I remember correctly, uses a very different method, starting with a whole tub of crystalized sugar and bonding the form within the tub of sugar.

[darkstar965]

Very cool but I wonder why the nozzle approach is likened more to a trendy new "3D printer" and not as much to a traditional pastry bag?

[dcs]

No doubt chefs will be able to use this technology to create innovative, amazing, unique flavors and textures. But the result will never really be food.

Perhaps it is even more likely that a computer will develop the recipe and program the printer, bypassing the chef altogether.

[DonRocks]

I wonder what Jason Andelman has to say about this.