The printed future of Christmas dinner
Baku, December 27 (AZERTAC). Christmas dinner traditionally centres on the turkey or goose. But if US scientists have their way, everyone may be sitting around a printer.
The team at Cornell University`s Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL) are building a 3D food printer, as part of the bigger Fab@home project, which they hope one day will be as commonplace as the microwave oven or blender.
Just pop the raw food "inks" in the top, load the recipe - or `FabApp` - and the machine would do the rest.
"FabApps would allow you to tweak your foods taste, texture and other properties," says Dr Jeffrey Ian Lipton, who leads the project.
"Maybe you really love biscuits, but want them extra flaky. You would change the slider and the recipe and the instructions would adjust accordingly."
The goal is to blow the lid off cooking as we know it and change the future of food production.
People lacking even basic culinary skills could download the recipe files of master chefs or print out nutrition-packed dishes recommended by their doctors.
Chefs could also create new foodstuffs and customizable menus for fussy customers.
And it would have the added benefit of cutting out some of the waste of current food production methods, says Homaro Cantu, chef and owner of the Moto Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, who has printed sushi using an ink jet printer.
"Imagine being able to essentially ‘grow’, ‘cook’ or prepare foods without the negative industrial impact - everything from fertilizers to saute pans and even packaging," he says.
"The production chain requirements for food would nearly be eliminated."
Local food, could really mean local.
"You can imagine a 3D printer making homemade apple pie without the need for farming the apples, fertilizing, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, fabricating, cooking, serving and the need for all of the materials in these processes like cars, trucks, pans, coolers, etc," he adds.
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