While most 3D printed objects are wholly inedible, some folks indeed print food. 3Digital Cooks recently did some taste testing.
The testing took place at a recent food printing conference where this video was captured:
They’re tasting 3D printed sugar objects, made by Julian Sing, a Netherlands-based food printing aficionado. Sing has access to a 3D sugar printer, on which he leverages his creativity to create food sculptures of various types.
Jason Ray and Luis Rodriguez Alcalde of 3Digital Cooks savored a few of these and reported this:
As I fondled the printed precious it had a pretty smooth outer shell to it and was very interesting to look at. It had a silky-chalky feeling but I didn’t notice too much rubbing off on my fingers, although there was a tiny bit of residue afterwards on my fingertips probably due to my nervours fingertips testing it. It felt firm and I couldn’t find any reason it would fall apart, it was stable and well built.
So…finally I through it in my grinning face and start to see how my mouth will handle it. Mine didn’t melt right away as Luis described his. It stayed firm even through sitting in my mouth for a few moments before I made my first chewing attempt. Not cracking or breaking completely apart, it was a little chewy and did take a while to dissolve… probably because I was trying to savor and memorize the moment. It was light, somewhat fluffy and tasted good.
This sounds similar to the experience we had with an experimental 3D sugar printer from 3D Systems over a year ago, but evidently Sing has been be refining sugar recipes to develop a winning formula.
While 3D food printing is of great interest, it is still in a development stage, with many barriers ahead, including long print times, food safety and of course, product taste. However, with the number of people working on the problem today, it’s clear we’ll see more interesting developments in the near future.
Via 3Digital Cooks
