Traditional food processing typically began with a recipe, which contained a list of ingredients and a description of procedures of how to transform these ingredients into the final foods. 3D food printing is completely different in the sense that it constructs methodically and layer by layer. Typically, it starts from a recipe similar to traditional food processing, but the recipe now also includes detailed instructions for the food printer to move the printer head to automatically "print" the cuisine.

Freedom of Design

Since the appearance of 3D printed food depends on the model that was created to instruct the printer, a wide variety of shapes, textures, and decorations can be produced. Printed foods may resemble those of traditional foods, such as a pizza, or they may have an unusual or even unique appearance. Assuming the 3D models have already been created, foods with intricate designs or decorations may be created more easily by a printer than by hand.

No Need for Tooling

How many times do you have a new dessert idea that you can’t make because you need to invest in a new mold? We all limit our creativity because we do not have at our disposal the shapes that suit us. The 3D printer makes it possible to forget the majority of these constraints. One of the biggest benefits of 3D food printing is making an edible shape food without going through the mold stage.

Time Savings

Some aspects of cooking are monotonous and repetitive, like chopping vegetables. 3D food printers create food autonomously once you have selected the dish you want, freeing up time to read a book, watch TV, or learn a language.

Additionally, some aspects of cooking have fairly steep learning curves. For example, it takes many years to master decorating wedding cakes. A food 3D printer can create these geometric shapes easily with a 100% success rate, and do it while you relax. This infinite shortening of the learning curve is one of the huge assets of 3D printing food.

Personalized, Precise, and Reproducible Nutrition

Since 3D printers follow digital instructions as they print, they can theoretically make food containing the correct percentage of nutrients required for a particular gender, life stage, lifestyle, or medical condition. The quantity of different vitamins and minerals and the amount of protein, carbohydrate, or omega-3 fatty acids could be controlled, for example.

Easy Reproducibility

Sharing recipes could be as simple as transferring a digital file over the internet. All that would be required is the same raw materials, printing settings, and compatible printing equipment.

Food Waste Reduction

In additive manufacturing, we consume only what is necessary to manufacture the part. Unlike other industrial processes, there is no need to start from a block of material that one comes to dig to obtain the desired shape.

This general consideration applies a little less to food production, where the right amount of material is often used. For example, if we make a cake dough, we will use almost the entire production by pouring it into molds.

However, kitchens produce a lot of food waste, by overproduction or simply because we eliminate some raw ingredients before cooking them (ex. peels, shells, stumps, bones, etc.). This is preparation waste. The management of collective catering waste as well as its treatment and recovery is an important issue.

Recovering organic waste reduces its volume and therefore the cost of disposing of it. uCuisine can help by integrating waste into a 3D printed paste. It works well for fruit purée or vegetable purée. Vegetable or fruit waste can be dehydrated and reduced to powder. The advantage of 3D printing is that you can use your own waste yourself!

3D printing has the potential to transform the food industry, not because of the fun shapes that can be produced (although this is going to be a niche market also in the future) but mainly because of personalization. 3D printed food can be personalized in terms of shape and flavor, but also in terms of health components. Potentially, in the future, 3D food printing can take into account a consumer’s personal health records including their latest blood analysis, to manipulate the composition or the content of health-promoting components in the 3D printed foods, which can contribute to long term health benefits in individuals.

Although strange, 3D-printed food is safe when made from fresh, natural ingredients like those you would find in the grocery store.

Absolutely! Novelty items earlier produced by consumer printers have paved the way for professional printers to produce food for restaurants and commercial kitchens.

At one gourmet restaurant in the United Kingdom, everyone is eating 3D-printed food because that is all that is served. The enterprising entrepreneurs at London’s Food Ink decided to push additive manufacturing to its logical extreme. Everything is 3D printed, including the utensils, plates, tables and chairs. At Miramar, a gourmet restaurant in Spain, food printers take on more mundane tasks, freeing chefs to better focus on their creative cuisine.

There is also a practical side to 3D-printed food. “SmoothFood” is already being served at more than 1,000 German nursing homes. Extruded food meets the needs of older residents who have difficulty chewing and swallowing. Various foods, including pork, chicken, potatoes, pasta and peas, are first cooked and then puréed before they are extruded and printed into recognizable shapes. 3D printing allows for food presentations that are visually appealing and therefore appetizing. With the infusion of $4 million from the European Union (EU), 14 companies in five countries are collaborating to expand the reach of SmoothFood.

3D-printed food offers both terrestrial and extraterrestrial appeal. If you think the idea of 3D-printed food is “out of this world,” so does NASA. In 2013, NASA awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract to a Texas company, so it could explore the potential for printing food on deep space missions. Astronauts would use a modest-sized 3D printer to transform space-saving bulk foods into tasty entrées.

Honestly, it can be a bit difficult to find 3D printed food, even in metropolitan areas. Your best chances would be in 3D printing events or culinary conventions such as 3D food printing conferences.

We are the first one who offering 3D food printer for consumers, that you can "print" your own dishes without any trouble.

The short answer is anything and everything that’s in a paste or semi-liquid state or could be turned into the right consistency for 3D printing. This includes a wide variety of salty foods like puréed vegetables, batters, doughs, cheeses, meat and sweets such as jellies, frostings, sugar decorations, chocolate, and mashed fruits.

You can order ingredients through the uRecipes app, or you can use your own ingredients to print the recipe yourself.

Currently, all food 3D printers on the market are mostly suited for architecting intricate shapes and designs, not actually cooking the ingredients. Usually, the edibles are either ready for consuming or will be cooked in an external oven (or grill) once the 3D printing process is finished.

We are the exception. The uCuisine is a machine that can work directly onto a hotplate of your stove! It still requires someone to flip the food and set the stove temperature, but everything else is done with the same equipment.

We understand that nobody is going to wait hours for dinner, so we designed uCuisine to be quick and easy. uCuisine does not have one print speed. Rather, speed is optimized based on the ingredient, the nozzle size and the print design. Print times depend on the ingredients, the recipe, and the quantity you are printing. Some things print very fast in a matter of minutes (e.g., flatter type foods like crackers, simple plate decorations), while other things take longer times (e.g., intricate chocolate sculptures can take 2 hours to print.). Quantities also have to be taken into consideration. For example, a small, single serving of ravioli will print faster than the quantity to feed a family of several people.

We are different by our vision on the future of cooking automation. Rather than thinking that 3D food printer it's a stand-alone device on your kitchen, we see a future that combines multiple functionalities in one system, and 3D food printing is only a part of this system. That's why our current version of uCusine can interact with another devices in your kitchen. Yes, it still needs some manual work for food preparation and cooking, but it's only beginning of journey and more development will come in the future.

In general, our BIG VISION of future cooking is a combination of four systems: the first will store food and keep it fresh, the second will prepare food, the third will cook, and the fourth will self-clean all the leftovers.

3D printing is a relatively new technology. Understandably, very few people know about printing food and tend to hesitate in trying it. 3D printed food has the same appearance as naturally prepared food. If you eat something from food manufacturers (which includes pretty much anything packaged in the supermarket), then you’re essentially eating artificially made food. Indeed, the food goes through a machine straight into a mold. With a 3D printer, however, you can make your own decision about which ingredients you use, so more innovative products can be created. New tastes can be elaborated. Further, both the health of consumers and the environment could benefit from the new technology. The last revolution for food processors was the microwave, which was more than 70 years ago. It’s time for a new one.