3d printing food

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Strap yourself in, dear reader. The future is here.

The idea of 3D-printed food isn’t a particularly new one, but the means by which we apply it now is stuffed to the gills with science. As 3D printing with plastic in the home sweeps the globe, so too is an inventive new way in which we can enjoy previously unpalatable foods.

Squirting emulsified food through a tube and forming it into a desired shape is a pretty old process. While bakers have been piping sugar through bags since at least 1769, humans have been pushing squishy meat into tubular intestines to create sausage since at least 2,000 BCE. A more modern form of extruded — dare I say 3D-printed — meats can likely be found in your cupboard collecting dust as we speak.

Spam first came onto the market in 1937. Spam is ground up pork shoulder and ham packed with salt and water and bound with potato starch to give it that famous gelatinous texture everyone associates with the product. While deemed revolutionary for its convenience, portability and long shelf life in the wake of World War II, the idea of creating gelatinized meat was hardly new.

Spam is essentially just a reformulated aspic, a savory meat-based jelly dish that’s usually stuffed with other savory ingredients like fish or eggs. Aspic has been around since at least 1375 CE when medieval chefs learned how to gelatinize savory meat-based broths to both create artistic delights and longer lasting meals.

Aspic dishes became even more popular in the 1800s, particularly in France. However, aspic’s true moment in the spotlight was during the 1950s in America. Burgers, cars, poodle skirts and greasers all played second fiddle to the country’s favorite meat jelly as cheap gelatin became easily obtainable throughout the postwar nation.

It was in the 1950s and 1960s when aspic began to take a very weird turn. Bright and colorful Jell-O had hit the market and companies were eager to shovel vintage food porn down the hungry gullets of Americans far and wide. Glamor shots of Spaghetti-Os suspended in sugary cherry red Jell-O graced catalogs and magazines of the ’50s and ’60s. While many of these weird recipes have thankfully vanished into the annals of history, some vintage Jell-O cook books can still be found by keen eyes trawling the aisles of thrift stores and used book stores.

You’d be right to point out that aspic is not exactly a 3D-printed food. However, its development was an important step toward the idea of squirting edible things out of a tube and forming it into a desired shape.

True 3D printing innovation in the culinary world began in 2006 when Cornell University created Fab@Home, a multi-material and open source 3D printer not unlike the Prusa MK3S+ at your local library. 3D printing at this time was still extremely expensive and difficult for the layman to use. Most 3D printers still required manual coding of coordinates by the user at this time, which vastly raised the bar for entry into hobby 3D printing.

One key difference between the Fab@Home and the Prusa we use at the library is that developers were able to attach a syringe to the Fab@Home in the place of the printer’s extruder. This gave it two distinct advantages over a traditional FDM printer. One was that virtually any liquid could be utilized for the purposes of 3D printing. The other was that you could easily make an item food grade-ready by simply installing a fresh nozzle.

The 3D printer at the library is not food grade, and yes, we have been asked to print utensils in the past. I cannot overstate the importance of you not doing that.

The Fab@Home was used on several occasions to create elaborate chocolate sculptures. Chocolate is a fantastic medium for 3D printing since it can be reliably liquefied at a higher temperature and reused for as long as it isn’t burned or mixed with other ingredients such as flour. This was only the first step in 3D printing unique foods. Other types of 3D printers use blasts of hot air to fuse sugar molecules together into shapes, a process similar to selective laser sintering in manufacturing.

In 2024, 3D-printed food has gone beyond just confections and squirting ham into tin cans. European companies have begun creating 3D-printed food that looks like other food to cater to vegan customers and customers with dietary restrictions or allergies. Revo Foods uses a mixture of pea protein and mycelium fibers to create faux-salmon filets and octopus tentacles. These items are sustainably grown and look remarkably similar to actual fish — and while it costs a bit more for the quantity you get, the price will only ever go down over time as it becomes easier to produce, unlike actual seafood.

Looking toward the advent of bioinks and other 3D printing developments in the biomedical sphere, it’s easy to see its applications toward creating better food for us in the future. Most biological food contamination happens when waste from the meat industry ends up in the water supply of vegetable farms. Lowering the demand for large-scale meat operations can lead to better protections for consumers, higher quality meats and much higher quality alternatives, and who doesn’t like safer and healthier food, so long as it still tastes great?

Stay curious, 7B.