How About a 3D Printed Breakfast?
We don’t cover 3d printed food all that much because overall, we’ve found that there’s a lot of hype but not a whole lot of substance.
There is however a company in Beijing working on creating a useful technology that will 3d print your breakfast, using ingredients tailor made to people’s nutritional needs and they’re quite ambitious.
“There are so many possibilities we can do with this technology. The 3D printing technology itself, in fact, is very simple. If we want to build the machine, it’s not too hard to put the pieces and coding together. However, as it seems to be the reoccurring theme with technology, application of this technology is the limitation of our imagination,” Leandra Rolon says.
Rolon is the CEO of DeFacto, which is working on 3d printed food products — including breakfast - and he’s gone about it by working with restauranteurs and local chefs, to try and apply 3d printing technology in a practical way.
“Once we jumped into 3D food printing industry, we quickly found out we need to conduct massive research with the help of other expertise,” he continued. “We knew exactly what we wanted and started collaborating with some big brands and restaurants in town. There, we picked up on food branding using our 3D printing model.”
Much of the focus is on personal nutritional needs. While it’s important for food that’s 3d printed to have an appealing aesthetic in order to entice potential users, including a health benefit is also essential.
In fact, the US Army seems to be in agreement with this idea, proven by its work in Massachusetts focusing on personalized meals for it’s soldiers.
“I enjoy making more appetizing-looking food; I see the importance of aesthetics and branding in food that we print,” Rolon said. “But imagine, if we can develop this technology to customize the food people eat with more emphasis on nutrition and convenience, that is where I see the potential of this industry coming to fruition.”
