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3-D Printable Food Gets Funding From NASA
cervesaebraciator writes
"According to Quartz, '[Anjan Contractor's] Systems & Materials Research Corporation just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3-D printing, envisions a much more mundane — and ultimately more important — use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor's vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.' No word yet on whether anyone other than the guy trying to sell the technology thinks it'll make palatable food."
The replicator!!!
We already eat foods that could be stored for years.
But I still prefer to dry-freeze them in blocks and then cut them up on my CNC into regular food shapes.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I hope it has a way to print a decent texture.. I would prefer not to live off mush.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
This will sell to lazy people of the same breed who buy pod coffee machines for home use.
There is an ever growing movement of people who don't want to eat anything that has loose synthetic origin or contains any "chemicals".
I'd rather just have a rooftop garden and compost all the waste. It's also zero-waste and is a lot more appealing, tasty and rewarding than tech like this ever could be.
Sounds like it could catch on for remote areas or situations where growing food is difficult, but otherwise it seems like a step in the wrong direction.
Exactly. With this new 3d printing technology people will now want to MAKE FOOD AT HOME! My god! We need to make it so its strictly regulated and people can only get food from government approved sites.
...has already dispatched a team.
Food Oil Cartridge is too low to allow non-oil based printing. You must replace ALL cartridges to continue printing.
The printer has detected a refilled cartridge in it's carrier; system lock-out until brand new cartridge is inserted.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm not a Star Trek fan but this always reminds me of A. C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. It is exciting to live in the future.
delicious and easy to print
Astronauts will be eating a lot of nachos on Mars.
You heard it here first.
OK, so who will be the first to post the phrase "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea"?
Oh, it was me.
Real life is overrated.
No flipping way. You'll have to pry my garden from my cold dead hands before I'm eating that shit.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
...don't care about palatable! i've seen children in cambodia eat bread crusts that are moldy, dirty, and soggy. quite sad, especially when 5U$D can buy enough bags of food to feed 30 kids for a day.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Other than astronauts and zombie bunkers, I don't see the appeal. We already pack strange synthetic food into cans that have more than enough shelf life for most occasions. I'd be willing to bet I'd prefer the taste and texture of said canned goods to whatever playdough this thing prints out. The only food that occasionally gets wasted around my house is fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat; none of which would really be replaced by this technology. If you find a way to print something more palatable that what I can already get from a can, then let me know.
I already have something like this. I input basic food components (including powders and oil, as needed) in a ordered fashion (sometimes layer by layer), and after a short time, I extract a customized, nutritionally-appropriate meal.
It's called an "oven".
It's incredibly difficult and time-consuming to eat well.
If there is an efficient way to get ALL the nutrients required in a safe and economic way, that's a great idea for times when cooking for "fun" is too much hassle.
If I could be satiated and well-fed with a mouse-click that would give me more time to enjoy other things in life, and be better for my health too.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Because today's food made from powder sucks because of the method of reconstitution, and not the fact that it was made into a fucking powder in the first place.
Although it can be nutritionally appropriate, it may still not be good for the body. I am not a biologist, but I don't believe that the body is built for finely processed food. I am assuming that there is some research correlating highly processed/refined foods and the some of the common ailments in the western world.
A great example I have seen showing processed vs non-processed foods is to simply put the food in a bowl of water. A lot of processed food will within a matter of minutes puff up to a multiple of their size, and when stirred will simply break up into a liquid solution. Natural (unprocessed, even minimally processed) foods will generally stay together for a lot longer.
Give it a couple of centuries, and we'll see how the human gut and digestive system evolve. Oh wait, we'll have medical systems to prevent natural selection, so we're going to be co-dependently evolving with our technology.
This is probably really cool for a lot of the worlds people that may not have access to the technology required to preserve food.
But I like cooking. Its one of the last things that I do that is kind of not actively involved with technology. Of course technology is involved in every process of growing/producing food but theres something cool about taking a bunch of raw ingredients and using basic tools (cast iron, fire) to create delicious food. I don't want that to go away.
This is the stuff the future is made off. Only thing still missing: flying cars. WTG !!
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I'd rather have food pills that the future promised 60 years ago.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Here's another food 3D printer!
Wow!
I'm not sure how Turkey bacon is made today, but it seems like it might be a 2D printing process.
Nullius in verba
If food is stored air tight many of it can be stored "for ever".
Sugar, flour, salt, oils (olive oil e.g.) even meat in a can can be stored hundrets of years.
Heck, people dig out mammoth in siberia and eat them, those where "stored" there for 10,000 years.
The fear of rotten food in ur modern days is barely understandable ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's what that sounds like. Would I eat that stuff if the choice was that or starve? Yes. But I wouldn't choose it. Talk about the ultimate in processed food!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I can print my very own Pink Slime in the comfort of my own home. Yay!
Oh, wait...
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
The geometry of food has an effect on how we perceive taste, so it wouldn't shock me if chefs to specialize in molecular gastronomy started experimenting with novel structures once 3d food printers become commonplace.
A thousand quatloos to the first person to design creme bruleé shell with the texture of cotton candy, 3d printed in a popsicle form factor.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Tea, Earl Grey, Hot!
the Nutri-Matic machine provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
3D printers turns materials i,e, thermoplastic) into a shape. But you still need the base materials. We are far from CHON food syntetizers. They must have some input, and better to be nutrient complete (and not what they think is nutrient complete, but what our body effectively needs). What it will use? Insects?, Soylent green ?
Anyway, just giving shape to something that you already have don't seem so big breakthrough. Just making a smoothie with them should be pretty similar.
Apocalypse peppers?
Sounds interesting ... what's the Scoville value of them? 20 million? 40?
Who do you think will be the only ones able to handle the regulatory burden that comes with producing the raw materials for this machine? Also, National Health Ministries will have a field day with this. Now they can finally monitor and make sure that all citizens eat healtily and according to regulations and recommendations every day.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
This might work and it might not... all I know is the proof will be in the pudding.
Jiggity
Add insect powder.
I'd be careful about complaining about the food it prints to the cook. It probably will not be long before someone figures out how to make it print an edible gun.
If you can eliminate all the waste that occurs before the food is served, that's okay.
But invent something that'll get my toddler to finish her scrambled egg without losing interest, and you've really got something.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
So much nay saying and negativity. And all of it pointing to straw men. I wonder what the next generation will find despicable.
<oblig>Soylent Green is PEOPLE!</oblig>
It might solve a problem for NASA; it will not solve the hunger ór the obesity epidemic. No, just give me this
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
We live in interesting times.
New technology isn't always better technology. Processed foods turned out to be pretty bad. What about printed foods? Just because we pack a bunch of powders into something doesn't make it nutritious, in fact (no reference, sorry) I recall hearing that one needs whole foods to be healthy. We don't know how the body processes all these things, and simply putting them together in something doesn't make it healthy. Granted, printed food is probably better than nothing, but I'll keep my fresh veggies and meat for now, thanks.
Also, the hitch seems to be that we won't waste food. I've heard stats in the U.S. that we waste a ton of food. I certainly don't, does that stat count restaurants? Would this tech end up there?
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Since when does NASA have 125 grand to toss around, all we ever hear about is how they are being strangled by budgets, but apparently have enough to give away an eighth million dollars on a sketchup drawing and melted chocolate.
Which BTW people IS NOT the first of its kind, we have seen chocolate 3d printers as early as 2011
http://www.gizmag.com/3d-chocolate-printer/19121/
The 3D printer is $30, but a 1lb flour cartridge? $300.
They will have to find a trick to make vitamin C not degraded after 30 years.
Reminder: humans cannot live without many micronutriments, and most of them are fragile.
...an organic shiv instead?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Print these! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPZ8HHRR1A0
Here's why it won't work. It's really very simple. Currently, today, in many big cities, people are starving. Call them homeless, call them poor; some are even starving to death.
And yet, there is protein available all around them. Insects are phenominal nutrition, and easily found.
It would seem that many people would prefer to starve rather than eat insects.
Where does a cartridge of complex carbohydrates rank on your list? On mine, it's way below carrot; it's below tomato. On my list, it's somewhere down around bean sprouts. To be clear, I don't eat bean sprouts except by accident. Which I guess places it above mushrooms, which I actively seek out and avoid.
It should be: Tea, Earl Grey, hot.
On the contrary, They'd come up with a whole new bunch of GenMod crops to corner the Ag part of printable foods and then lobby Congress to make certain that only their crop could be used in the making of printed food.
That and they can add G23 Paxeline Hydrochloride to the food powders to calm the population and weed out aggression. I wonder if there'll be any side effects? Nah!
We need to make it so its strictly regulated and people can only get food from government approved sites.
?! Are you and the mods fucking double retarded? Grow you some wheat, dumbass.
Now just imagine how fucking moronic you sound to me.
"He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store."
What he is salivating about is a day when everyone pays him a royalty for every bite they eat.
There are no "corner grocery stores" in most of the world and especially not in the places starving.
We can already, without any electricity or fancy technology, turn sunshine into forages to grow meat. That he'll never beat.
you know, you can already make your own food, out of dirt, water, and sunlight.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I want the instant meal things they had on bugs bunny where you'd add a drop of water and it would turn into a full turkey dinner with about 8 courses plus dishes and silverware.