3D Food Printing: Opportunities, principles, limitations, and new ways in food production. The idea of printing food products based on digital 3D models is indisputably innovative, intriguing and provides many opportunities to completely renew how food is produced. Indeed, 3D food printing has ambitions of nutritionally and sensory personalized food manufacturing, on-demand food production, food waste reduction and innovative sensory perception. While the first experiments were focused only on chocolates, later, a large diversity of food, such as fruits, meat, fish, vegetables, potato, cereals, and dairy products, were used as edible inks. In all cases, it has been possible to replicate the digital models with enough accuracy although many challenges still limit the application at the industrial level or for home use. This contribution analyzes and discusses the scientific information on the ambitions, the basic principles and the main processing variables, the most important applications, and the reasons limiting the use on the market. Finally, future perspectives such as 4D food and programmable texture have been analyzed. The SIB is available below and with the series of IUFoST SIBS here.
authored by Professor Antonio Derossi, Department of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources and Engineering (DAFNE) – University of Foggia, Italy
