Biotech and Space Pizza: When Will We See It in Real Life?
“Yes, everyone knows us for our space pizza,” BeeHex founder Anjan Contractor laughs.
Anjan was one of the first “normal people” to make a 3D printer outside a lab, but he wanted to push further. Naturally, putting chocolate in his machine was the only logical choice.
It seemed pretty weird at the time but paid off in the long run. The year was 2010, and Anjan worked with NASA to provide food for deep-space missions. His chocolate experiment would change many astronauts’ lives.
Astronauts are in space for months on end, and the missions to places like Mars last years, so the question is how to store nutritious food that can withstand space conditions. What do astronauts eat in space besides freeze-dried ice cream, anyway?
Answer: mostly pre-packaged, freeze-dried food with limited options and low nutritional content. These food options were in stark contrast to the extreme level of health required for an astronaut to begin a space mission. So Anjan set out to “integrate medicine and food together.”
Astronauts’ most highly desired food was pizza; Anjan delivered. After some phase one funding and hard work on development, the highly anticipated product was unveiled: space pizza! It was made on the spot using 3D printing technology and could even be fortified with more nutritious ingredients — much better, and much more filling, than a sad pack of freeze-dried meat.
But this tech shouldn’t just be limited to NASA’s best: No, Anjan envisions a future in which personalized printed food is available everywhere you go. He sees it in gas stations, gyms, grocery stores — anywhere people are thinking about or interacting with food or nutrition.
Anjan explains that right now, our food system is too disconnected from our medical system: “The way we lead our lives today is different than the way we might expect — if someone has a calcium deficiency they take calcium pills; they don’t each iron-rich food. We want to provide personalization based on the test and on what you prefer.”
On top of that, the craze for organic “whole” foods, while valid, must be expanded upon. Eating completely unaltered food is just unrealistic today. Anjan explains that 90% of the food we eat is not whole or handmade. A simple example is the blender: once there were mortar and pestles, but now blenders are used in one way or another to create just about every commercially available food. This obliviousness to the amount of modifications made even to foods that are extremely good for you is the wall we need to break through in order for 3D food printers and bioprinters to be widely accepted.
This development won’t just be delicious but also important for our health. Anjan’s contract with the U.S. Army to integrate personalized printed nutrition proves that this isn’t just a tech expert’s pipe dream: It’s a future on its way, already being invested in. The vision is that each soldier will wear a sensor to measure their heart rate, heartbeat pattern, blood pressure, caloric intake, etc. This is like an intense, combat-ready, more precise Fitbit. Where BeeHex comes in is creating personalized nutrition based on the data these sensors collect so that soldiers can have to-the-minute information on what their bodies need in each moment. Turns out the old saying “an army travels on its stomach” rings true, after all.
The future is here, and we can’t wait for you to taste it!
—
Contact me at sgt26@georgetown.edu with any and all questions or thoughts. To learn more, check out Printing Your Dinner: Personalization in the Future of Food, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle starting June 11!
