How 3D printing is shaking up high end dining
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Also, a lab at Cornell has done work on 3D printing food: http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/node/194
And of course NASA is exploring 3D printing food in space: http://www.3dprintingprogress.com/articles/9147/3d-printing-...
The current climate is such that presentation rules over all else. It needs to look good in Instagram. Flavor is taking a back seat. There was a restaurant which was going against this trend, but, unfortunately also in a trendy way. They'd serve you dinner in near darkness. But of course the food wasn't normal food, they had to reel people in with unusual foods to make the experience more "memorable".
Perception has been shown over and over to have dramatic influences on flavor: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201402/th...
Presentation is often seen as important as composition in culinary circles, and for good reason.
And a higher-end example, including some really stunning pieces: http://www.3dsystems.com/culinary
I saw them at the National Restaurant Show, but this video was shot around the same time, same booth.
The "impossible" designs from future 3D-printers will probably be cool, but the technology appears to not quite be there yet.
There's also the time factor. Printing out a single layer of a sauce/puree in a fancy pattern is a lot faster than making a complex multi-layered shape.
At any rate, there are certainly 3D desserts and showpieces, and there have been for awhile. The neat part of this is that it's being used for more than just sugar and chocolate.
Today the strongest marketing trends in food are fresh, organic, local and seasonal.
No, 3d will not make a food revolution.
And secondly, just because you can't see the link between the two doesn't mean there's no link. Perhaps put it this way: 50 years ago, some people thought that highly processed foods were the quality food of the future. Over time it became apparent that quality food was considered to be 'back-to-basics', original and fresh stuff. Now there is a new trend of highly processing food that some think will be the quality food of the future.
Of course 3D printing food won't be anything more than a toy. It requires expensive equipment with a lot of maintenance, specific training, and can only be used with a limited subsection of foods (basically anything you can put into a piping bag, which also has to be stiff enough to support it's own weight). The idea of this spreading to the massed public is just ludicrous; who is going to be making the family dinner with a 3D printer? And keep on doing that regularly, once the novelty wears off?
A toy for high-end restaurants does not a food revolution make.
The military also produces meals ready to eat (MREs) which are fairly easy for civilians to procure. Radiation is used to kill every living thing in MREs so the food can be shipped with most of its water content in it and still lasts for decades. MREs are incredibly nutritionally dense, though the lack in the flavor department. But I bet the lack of flavor is because their made by the lowest bidder for the military and not because of a technical restriction.
If you just want a meal in a can, there are dozens of brands of meal replacement shakes you can get at your local grocery store.
The complaints of blandness are probably because they have to be eaten by a wide variety of military members, and having something high on the Scoville Scale would be a problem (although .. the tiny bottles of Tabasco are highly prized). The same meals also end up in non-military branded packaging being given to refugees, and often their stomachs can't handle anything spicy in the slightest after what they've been through.
* "astronaut food" completely sacrifices the art and enjoyment of food for efficiency.
* 3D printing is a way to explore methods of increasing art and enjoyment of food (certainly not efficiency).
The complete absence of "astronaut food" in daily life, with the exception of Soylent/Ensure for a small minority, is I think indicative of two things:
1. We still don't really know what optimal nutrition is, so "try to eat lots of green things" is generally viewed as optimal. People rightfully don't trust anyone to decide what's optimal and codify it as a single food.
2. People don't even want to eat optimally, they want to enjoy eating. Astronaut food does not deliver on this.
3D printing does not attempt to provide optimal nutrition, but explores avenues to increase enjoyment of food. "Revolution", maybe not, but these two prediction are 100% orthogonal IMO.
ie:
http://theforkchicago.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/in-the-time-i...
Really? I increase my enjoyment of food by eating when I am really actually hungry. Everything tastes good when you are hungry. Why do we need fancy tricks to make regular food palatable, Am I missing something here.
NON SEQUITUR
Claim A is made.
Evidence is presented for Claim A.
Therefore, claim C is true.
I'm sure you could do much more interesting things with a food printer, like:
- actual structures with chocolate or sugar
- designs that would be to tedious to do by hand (I'd recommend using paths, not shapes to be filled as input data)
- semi-mixed flavors or flavor gradients
- print on to soup
- print from higher above, letting things fall organically
- dithered gradients on the plate
- play with speed to thin things out organically
Sugar Eiffel Tower dessert would be awesome! But then again, there are plenty of mass-produced items that are identical, intricate, and perfect. Part of the lure of gourmet is the hand-crafted dish unique to me.
I'm glad to see experimentation in gastronomy. Ultimately, the consumer will decide what techniques take hold for the long run.
I remember reading how in the Renaissance Madonnas had a high BMI (sorry for the use of BMI, I'm not sure if "little fat" it's an adequate way of describing them) because food were scarce and then being fat was a way of portraying wealth, see for reference the Mona Lisa or other Da Vinci paintings.
In modern times, healthy food is the new "wealth food" because it's more expensive due to several factors including but not limited to body preference for fats and sugars for historical and evolutionary reasons and how this has been exploited by the industry (e.g. fast food).
With that said when I hear "High End Dining" I think about a breast of chicken complemented with food intended to have a delicious tasting AND healthy.... not "this looks nice on photos" food.
IMHO 3d printers are going to be very important in the future,but not in their current form.
I volunteer teaching kids 3d printing and engineering not because the present but because of the evolution of it in 10 or 15 years.
Like it was essential to me to have an assembler or compiler when I was young in order to own a computer company or control machines as an adult, being raised with 3d printing is going to be essential for owning the robotics and technology space of the future(DNA manipulation).
Many of these could probably just have been made with a cookie cutter or a pastry bag. I could imagine the the big issue with supporting all types of materials is the wild inconsistencies in viscosity for the different types of food.