Food From a 3-D Printer!

[Gregory Matthews]

As, probably all of us know, 3-D printing is here.  In 3-D printing, a computer builds up successive layers of an extruded material to form a computer model.  Commercially this process  is known as additive manufacturing.  Of the following list, what is NOT suitable for 3-D printing?  IOW, what can not yet be done by the 3-D printing process?  

*  Forming a nutritionally adequate item of food that a person could eat.

*  To build rocket parts.

*  To build microdrones that can fly military missions.

*  To build prosthetic parts that amputees could wear.

*  Replacement parts for aircraft.

*  To build an exoskeleton that one could wear that would protect as do armored vests do today and at the same time provide mobility to the person.

The correct answer is that all of the above can be produced by a 3-D printer.  My interest is the fact that food could potentially be produced.  See my quote on this in a post below.

 

 

[Gregory Matthews]

The answers to the above question may be found in:

Mark Cantrell, "Made To Order," Military Officer, July 2017, Page 58ff.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

From page 61 of the above article:

Nutrition from a printer 

At first thought, printing food might seem counterintuitive - after all, it's not that difficult to bake a cookie or assemble a sandwich. But food technologist Lauren Oleksyk explains personnel at the NSSC are looking to the future, where the technique will be used to tailor rations to the individual warfighter's needs. 

“MREs are nutritionally complete, but they're a one-size-fits-all solution,” Oleksyk explains. “Soldiers' nutritional needs vary depending on things such as their activity levels, allergies, and food sensitivity. When we began looking at 3-D printing, we started to realize that we could optimize nutrients and personalize food for soldiers based on their individual desires and needs.” 

That's not to say they haven't encountered challenges. “Printing food is so complex that it's not really being pursued commercially,” says Oleksyk. One major consideration is the longevity of the supplies used to create food, she says; ideally they should last several years. Another is safety: After it has been printed, the food needs to be shelf-stable until it can be delivered. And, of course, it should be appetizing. 

“We can make long-lasting food with the proper nutritional makeup, but if it's not palatable, soldiers won't eat it,” Oleksyk says. 

The goal eventually is to determine a soldier's real-time nutritional needs using wearable biometric sensors, says Oleksyk. That information would be compared to the soldier's preprogrammed baseline physiological data, which can be wirelessly transmitted to a computer and used to print a food item that exactly matches the war-fighter's current needs. “The long-term goal, envisioned for 2030 and beyond, is to print customized foods on or very near the battlefield,” Oleksyk says. “But initially, it's more likely that the printers will be located in field kitchens and even field hospitals.”