Imagine a world where a juicy, savory marbled steak, comes not from cow’s meat, but from a 3D printer. Or maybe it’s a slice of picture-perfect layered chocolate cheesecake that’s printed, rather than baked. Seem far-fetched? Turns out, it isn’t – in fact, it’s what our latest guest on Future Says, food roboticist Jonathan Blutinger, has been working on for nearly a decade. In his academic work as a doctoral student at Columbia Engineering, commercial work with Redefine Meat and since recording this podcast, his research for the U.S. Army DEVCOM Soldier Center’s Combat Feeding Division, Blutinger has been pioneering the art and science of 3D-printed food for nearly a decade. 

But with all the great food available in the world, why would we need to 3D print any? What technology enables 3D-printed food? What benefits would it deliver? Would people accept it? These are questions Blutinger tackles every day. Read on to see how 3D printing could transform the way we think about food from one of the field’s most innovative minds.

Why 3D-Printed Food?

Blutinger knows that the idea of “3D-printed food” can seem outlandish at first glance. Hailing from a Mediterranean household with an Italian mother, food was a cherished institution for his family and he knows the impact it can have. “Everyone's emotional about food,” he says. “It’s kind of a hot take, but I feel like people are more opinionated about food than politics or religion in a lot of ways.” That said, he doesn’t believe 3D-printed food is such a crazy thing to conceptualize. Indeed, he believes it could help us redefine the way we think about food and its preparation. “It's less about 3D printing and more about software,” he says. “We want to combine software with food because when you can combine software with a different domain, it allows us to do things we weren't able to do before. With food, [technology] allows you to be more controlled and deliberate about the food you're eating.”

How does this apply to 3D-printed food? For starters, 3D-printed food is prepared in an incredibly precise way, controlled by software and machines that can cook things far more accurately and consistently than people can. “Right now, many things you can think of can probably be replicated on a food printer,” Blutinger says. This precision and customizability, he says, can allow people to tailor their food – and more importantly their nutrition – to their unique needs. Printing gives users unmatched control over portions, temperatures, textures, and other variables. This could help people provide their bodies with the essential nutrients they require more effectively. 

What does 3D-printed food look like in practice? First, you need highly specialized software and hardware. From there, after programming and calibrating everything, the process is a combination of ingredients (which usually start as pastes, powders, or liquids) and time. “Think of it like a ‘one-stop shop,’ like a digital cooking platform where you have 18 ingredients – all these little cartridges – in front of a machine. And then you have two lasers facing down. [The machine] picks up an ingredient, prints with it, drops it off, cooks it at the same time, and then picks up another ingredient,” Blutinger says. “It's just like cooking something in the kitchen, except there's no human doing it, just a robot.”

Still in the Proving Grounds 

Blutinger’s ultimate original vision is that people will own food printers in their kitchens like they have other appliances like blenders, air fryers, and toasters. But he acknowledges technology is still in its early stages and faces many challenges. The first major challenge right now is that the technology is still young – as such, the highly specialized software and hardware needed to do it isn’t widely available on the market yet. This makes everything expensive. In addition, current food printers and software currently require a high level of technical skill to operate. This combination of high costs and low ease of use are formidable hurdles. “The issue right now is the price point and that you need to be an engineer to work the machine,” Blutinger says. “It’s also less efficient and more energy consuming [than traditional cooking] right now; it doesn't compete in a lot of ways that normal cooking does.”

But hurdles are all a part of any technological journey – after all, high costs and low ease of use tend to fade as technology matures. As one of the leaders in the realm of food engineering, Blutinger understands that taking the long view will pay off. Despite the fact that his Ph.D. advisor, Hod Lipson, has been advancing this tech since 2007, Blutinger’s personal journey with it spans just seven years—a mere infancy in the lifespan of such a major technology. “Right now we're still in the developmental stage. We're pushing the R&D as much as we can to show people what's possible, and then you just have to put this in the hands of people in the space that might use it and see where the chips fall,” he says. “Eventually, when the technology gets compact and user friendly enough – and when people are familiar with it – it will start to pervade our homes in a big way.” 

Education, Innovation, and a New Paradigm

Blutinger’s work has been featured in countless media outlets and publications and has been met with reactions ranging from intrigue to skepticism. He says reasonable doubts and questions only solidify the belief he has in his work. “[Skepticism] reaffirms to me that this is a new technology, something that people haven't really heard about,” he says. “I like the fact that it's something new and different; and I like not trying to convince people, but trying to at least educate them on what it is and how it's not an alarming or scary thing.” Indeed, he says that people who’ve already seen (and in some cases, tasted) the technology firsthand often quickly open up to the idea of 3D-printed food and what it can offer. “People, I think, see automation and see robots touching food and they get scared.” he says. “I think when I explain to people that it's not going to take their job anytime soon, they're more okay with it. I think it’s just an education thing.”

Years down the line, Blutinger imagines a future in which 3D-printed food can help us save time and eat healthier – without needing much input from its operators. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), he says, certainly have their role to play in making that future a reality. “I imagine a holistic smart machine that can deliver the foods, flavors, and nutrients people need and want on the fly, potentially even to the point where it can predict these things with machine learning, AI, and data analytics,” he says. “I think it’d be really interesting to see a closed loop machine that can follow your eating habits and actually start to predict what you're going to eat before you want to eat it – and make it for you like a nutritionist or personal chef.”

Technology has revolutionized cooking and food preparation for all of human history – could 3D-printed food be the next culinary revolution? Will the next best personal chef be a robotic printer? Only time will tell – we’ll just have to see how the cookie crumbles.

Click here to listen to the full episode with Columbia Mechanical Engineering Ph.D., Jonathan Blutinger. To check out the rest of Future Says season five, visit https://altair.com/future-says. And be sure to subscribe to Future Says on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music/Audible, YouTube Music, and Podcast Addict.