3D opportunity serves it up: Additive manufacturing and food

Additively manufactured food may be more of a novelty than an industry game-changer—for now. Yet advances in technology and innovations in its application could mean that science fiction may become fact sooner than expected.

What will our spaceship-dwelling descendants eat? If science fiction is any guide, machines such as Star Trek’s“replicators”1 will be able to generate any desired foodstuff on demand. We’re a long way from that reality—three centuries, in the Star Trek universe—but manufacturers have taken steps in that direction, with real-world implications for the short as well as long term.

Few readers would be surprised to learn that inventors and manufacturers have experimented with printing food—it’s a natural evolution in the technology of additive manufacturing (AM), commonly referred to as 3D printing. For some 30 years, AM—a manufacturing technique that builds objects layer by layer—has focused on using polymers (for example, plastics) and, more recently, metals. In the past few years, experimental materials, including edible ingredients, have emerged as well. Accompanying that expansion, AM is coming to encompass a wider set of applications, ranging from aerospace cooling ducts to 3D-printed pizzas.

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Is that food on your plate?

Poison in our kitchen: How deadly chemicals have invaded India's food chain

Wake up and smell the coffee. Err...maybe, not. Who wants to start a new day with the depressing possibility that the first drink you chug down may have coffee-flavoured mud, starch or worse? A good ol' cuppa tea, then? What if it has coal tar dye? You'll end up with lung or skin cancer. Ouch. Pour out some apple juice. And puke your way to nirvana? It may just have fungi patulin. How about a glass of ice-cold milk? Brace for a jolt of deadly chemicals: antibiotic gentamicin, pumped indiscriminately into cows, that will give you hard-to-treat infections; pesticide boric acid that kills cockroaches and gives humans lead poisoning; preservative formalin that can change your kidneys forever. So just drink some water. But, first, pray that there's no bromate lurking in it, to turn on your cancer genes.

Wolf of food street
With the great instant noodle scare in the last few days, a fear psychosis has gripped the nation. Every food on your plate is suspect: all the items above have been recorded, reported or recalled by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) ever since it came into being in 2011. Harmful, dangerous, alien chemicals and non-foods are secretly invading our lives, as a culture of infectious greed grips much of our food chain: from farm to fork. At any given point, someone somewhere along multiple touch points on that chain is trying to get rich by altering, substituting, passing off or turning a blind eye to unacceptable processes and materials. A terrible human and economic cost looms large.

India is the world's worst food violator, reports global food source monitoring company, Food Sentry. China follows closely and the US is also one of the top 10. Most violated foods are raw or minimally processed, including seafood, vegetables, fruits, spices, dairy products, meats and grains. More than a third of food frauds take place due to "excessive or illegal pesticides", pathogen contamination and filth or insanitary conditions. "What's worrying is the mislabelling on products of packaged foods," says Dr Suneeta Chandorkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Food and Nutrition, Faculty of Family and Community Services, MS University, Vadodara. "They all say 'healthy' but tests have shown they are hardly that."

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8 Exotic Superfoods to Boost Your Immune System

Extracts from acai berries may destroy cancer cells, particularly those associated with leukemia.
Goji berries are richly immersed in antioxidant power.

Dulse is a sea vegetable with many vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, and other natural food chemicals with antioxidant properties.

Hijiki is a sea vegetable that looks like black angel hair pasta.

You can find virtually every nutrient in sea kelp.

Kombu, another sea vegetable, provides minerals that are particularly important in your diet.

Nori is the most popular sea vegetable because it’s used to make sushi.

Another great sea vegetable, wakame, provides a salty taste that comes from a balance of sodium and other minerals from the sea.

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