Dinner is a snap–with your new 3D food “printer.” Load raw food “inks” into the syringes, download a recipe, change the settings to suit your taste, and “print” a 3D meal. According to scientists at the Cornell University Computational Synthesis Lab, their food printers will one day be as common as microwaves and blenders. They currently make decent cookies and turkey domes, but the Star Trek “replicator” (just ask the computer for any meal, and it creates it, on the spot) is one step closer to reality.
Reporting for the BBC, Lakshmi Sandhana reports that Homaru Cantu has used similar technology to “print” sushi in his Moto Restaurant, in Chicago. Cantu says this would reduce food waste and eliminate packaging. Lakshmi reports that currently, the food printers use “liquid or melted versions of ingredients, including chocolate, cookie dough, cheese, or cake batter. However, the [Cornell] team are now experimenting with mixing foods with hydrocolloids – substances that form gels with water, generally used to thicken food products – to create a range of basic liquid ingredients.”
Eating together and cooking together are fundamental human activities. I do not wish to streamline it to the point of effortlessness. However, if we can provide food printers and tailored recipes for people with specific nutritional needs, maybe this would be useful in some circumstances. Plus, the whole replicator thing makes my inner geek happy.
Via Slatest. (bonus coverage: more on 3D printer functionality, including a printer that could print itself!)
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