Software-controlled food tech: 3D printed pipe-dream, or fatal stack instability?

Peanut butter, Nutella, and strawberry jam represent squirtable media in a demonstration of 3D printing digital cooking, which has led to the odd dubious result. Food research scientists at New York's Columbia University have constructed multi-layered food items — including cheesecake — in what they say is a breakthrough in …

[Ideasource]

It seems highly inefficient to the point of virtually reinventing the wheel to develop technology and the take on the overhead of a supporting industry for something already provided naturally by a person taking a few minutes of healthy downtime from life's ambitions while they make themselves a snack.

So many interacctions and lossy dependencies could be avoided and still have access to these items with relative convenience.

This solution looking for a problem is unnecessary complexity and loss to engage.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, true, although I must say that the video was entertaining in the way things came apart.

The idea behind it is that you have x containers of ingredients which are combined to make something edible, with or without diligent application of heat, which could be useful if you don't have the space or the climate to store the edible result in its final format, thus enabling on demand creation. Originally I thought maybe something for a space station, but then I realised you'd need some gravity to make this work.

Maybe it's not exactly going to immediately win Michelin stars, but I do think there's something to this. It is however evident that it will take some time to progress beyond something that needs a spoon to eat :).

[Anonymous Coward]

New food experiences for the win

That is where creative cooks will make some magic with these tools. But the tools by themselves won't lead to food that makes any kind of sense. It reminds me me of Alton Brown using an centrifuge in one of the episodes. There was a guest chef he was "competing" against in the episode, which was really a showcase on using some non traditional tools and methods in the kitchen. But you could see the light bulb come on for the chef as clearly as you could see he was not impressed with Alton's version of tomato soup.

It will never make sense to stock a "3D food printer" to cook user selectable food choices in real time. It's too slow, too expensive, and in the end pointless. You can stack pre-made versions of the limited selections you could print in the same space such a machine would take up, but cheaper, faster, and more efficiently. Japan already is.

So you are left with the novel factor, which for a vending machine is self limiting. Or you let the chefs go cracy with them, 3d printing a crispy shell and possibly filling it with tasty things. Plenty already are with things like chocolate. But in reality, it's mostly just a minor tool that can easily make a handful of shapes that are hard to do with a mold or form.

So I expect I will see this on cooking shows more than in working kitchens.

[skeptical i]

Maybe for wedding and other specialty cakes ...

a 3-D printer could be loaded with different coloured frostings to build more detailed and intricate cake toppers than one could do "by hand" (with frosting bags, squirty tubes, and whatever else baker-wizards use these days). Otherwise methinks this is, as has already been noted, a solution looking for a problem.

[b0llchit]

First world problems

...customizable foods...

Basically, this says it all. We've become extreme selfish bastards.

[that one in the corner]

Glad to see they've been reading old Make magazines

and blogs from the past ten, twenty years. It may be a breakthrough for them, but...

These things have been toyed with for ages by enthusiasts, printing with anything that can fed through an extruder and/or cut by a CNC bed with a novel tool head.

Not to mention the robot mixologists (vital during the development stages, when the laser-cut gingerbread catches fire or the pancake batter drawing bot starts serving up obscene shapes).

[Denarius]

Blech

thats what yanks call cheese cake ? Yuk, gag etc

[Dan 55]

I'll take that with a pinch of salt

Food research scientists at New York's Columbia University have constructed multi-layered food items — including cheesecake — in what they say is a breakthrough in more customizable foods, improved food safety, and user control of nutrients.

This comes from the US, so anything that isn't made out of high fructose corn syrup is considered high quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'll take that with a pinch of salt

... and anything not fried is considered healthy ...

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: I'll take that with a pinch of salt

anything not fried is considered healthy

Fried high-fructose corn syrup? Where can I sign up?

(To never, ever, ever consume it obviously. I don't fancy developing diabetes again or having another heart attack..)

[Evil Auditor]

Bah humbug! Call me again once it can make pizze with ananas on top.

[NXM]

Will it wash up after itself?

No, of course not.

And obviously the answer to overprocessed "food" is to process it even more!

[Sherrie Ludwig]

This is food?

this is food only if "food" were an idea described down a glitchy data connection from a digitally-based entity reading a corrupted translation of a Medieval palimpsest on food, to another entity who photosynthesizes for energy, and is doing this just for the grant money. Has any of these numpties ever eaten any crust that hasn't been baked?

[tiggity]

cheesecake?

Where was the cheese?

It was a monstrous "layered dessert" but not a cheesecake by any normal persons definition