3D Printed Food: Facts and Myths

Designers and engineers have been using 3D printing technology for many years, but it is still new to many makers and artists, who discovered this technology after it became more accessible. Among the people eager to use 3D printing are kitchens and pastry shops.

Sursa: 3D Systems

In the food industry, the first products 3D printing was experimented with were toppings for cakes, candies and other artistic oddities, but slowly this process became better known and chefs/pastry chefs started printing with other materials too.

Sweet creation

Experiments so far demonstrate that 3D printing will be successful in the confectionery industry. Specialists have created a set of gaskets that could not be made in other ways. Thus was born the Chef Jet machine, capable of printing with sugar and certified for food production. Customizing a product could become one of the biggest benefits of 3D food printing, although not many use this technology to produce industrial quantities.

Food industry giants demonstrate how 3D printing can be implemented at certain stages of product development. The British company Cadbury uses traditional 3D printers to create molds and new prototypes of sweets, which often could not be made without a complex production line. In this way they are able to speed up the development process and reduce the costs associated with introducing a new product to the market

Not just sweets

The Italian company Barilla proves that 3D printing is not only applied to sweets. Together with the TNO Institute, they are working on creating a 3D printer designed exclusively for printing with wheat flour. This implementation has great potential for customization and therefore, in the future, we will be able to create and order customized pasta for weddings or restaurants.

Attempt

The Chinese company Beets has conducted several experiments with the ZMorp 2.0 SX printer. In addition to chocolate desserts, they also printed gelatin animals and Philadelphia cream cheese figurines.

Just like everyone who prints with food, those at Beets also had to create their own materials. Food is not like plastic, it does not have a perfect recipe. For example, to create chocolate desserts they had to use chocolate mousse instead of melted chocolate.

We also have to take into consideration the legal aspects of this production process, because most printers do not have food production certificates, in some countries it is even illegal to produce food through this process. For this reason, most 3D printing processes are still experimental and artistic.

Although 3D printing has many limitations and lacks certification, it has so much potential that even NASA researchers are testing this technology with the aim of using it in space. It’s a pretty bold vision, but some say everyone will have a 3D printer in their kitchen.

Conclusion

The application of 3D printing in food production is currently constrained primarily by significant legal and safety limitations, most notably the lack of food production certificates for the majority of printers. In many jurisdictions, this certification gap renders the process illegal for commercial use, relegating much of the current activity to experimental and artistic domains. However, the technology’s immense potential is validated by high-profile research, exemplified by NASA’s testing of food 3D printing for use in space missions, where resource and logistics optimization is critical. While the vision of every kitchen housing a 3D food printer remains bold, the ongoing research and investment indicate that overcoming current regulatory and technical hurdles is seen as an inevitable step toward integrating customized, on-demand food manufacturing into both specialized and consumer environments.