In the early days of personal computers one of the selling points was the idea of keeping recipes on file, stored on the PC or a floppy disc. Ordered, retrievable, easily cross-referenced by ingredients, making it easy to make a shopping list and to follow the directions. No more tattered papers, no more lost recipes folded or stored in a book somewhere.
That never really took off. Yet cooking websites abound, cooking videos of all types and ethnicities, professional and amateur can be found. But recipe software, recipe programs, even recipe apps for phones and tablets never caught on with the intensity early PC promotion would have indicated.
So, you might wonder, what’s cooking?
How about computer-generated food? Maker fairs or computer labs are using 3D printers to create edibles.
Seems bizarre? Consider this: by the year 2050, estimates are the world population will reach nine billion. How we will this future population be fed? Do the resources exist? Can digital strategies address the needs to prepare for those sustenance needs? The answer may well be found in food technology.
By now you may have heard of 3-D printers. If you haven’t heard of them, here’s how a NY Times OpEd piece described them in 2013: “a 3-D printer is sort of like a hot-glue gun attached to a robotic arm. But instead of squeezing out glue, the tube extrudes plastic.” That OpEd was a light-hearted look at creating an entire meal, including the silverware and plates, using a 3-D printer. The 3-D printing has advanced considerably since 2013. Digital years make dog years seem slow.
Cornell and Columbia Universities have been working on 3-D printing of food. Digital development of food via natural products, stored for use in this form of “printing.” Think of printing as a euphemism for manufacturing. At Columbia, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Hod Lipson, has studied 3-D printing for the better part of two decades. He’s 3-D printed metals, plastics, and biomaterials. He came to realize 3D food printing was possible while researching printing complete 3D robots that could, in theory, “walk off the printer.”
This required simultaneous use of many materials. At that same time Lipson noticed his students had begun to use food as test material in the labs.
This prompted Lipson to take a deeper look at what they could do with food. He narrowed it down to two basic approaches to 3D food printing. One involves powders, bound together during the printing process with liquid (usually water) during the process. The other, used by Lipson in his lab, is extrusion based. That means it uses syringes to deposit gels or pastes on specific locations as determined by the software’s recipe (so to speak). The early experimentation used various materials with varying levels of success. The materials were what the
Digital Strategy
to Feed the Planet
by Dean Landsman