As 3D printing technology improves, people keep finding new uses for it. And the latest is pretty sweet: cheesecake. Researchers with the department of mechanical engineering at Columbia University created a seven-ingredient slice of cake using a 3D printer, and they say printing foods could be a new cooking option with several benefits.
Printing food is not as avant-garde as it sounds. Such printers have been used to make organs before, and similar technologies already exist in the food space – like pizza and bread robots, pasta printers and automatic cake decorators, the researchers say in the study, published in the NPJ Science and Food journal.
The researchers defined printed food as “the controlled deposition of an ingredient; as such, any ingredient that was extruded as a paste (e.g. peanut butter, Nutella, vegetable puree, mustard, ground beef, sausage, chicken nuggets),” and they say many existing processed foods can be considered “printed” by this definition.
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