The population of the Earth is about 7 billion people, and even now not everyone has enough food. What will happen when there are 12 billion of us? An engineer from the USA offers to synthesize familiar food from cheap and nutritious, but unappetizing components using 3D printers.
Anyang Contractor of Systems & Materials Research Corporation has developed a prototype device that creates edible food from multiple nutrients. His project has already received funding from NASA - the fact is that such a system will be useful in long-term space expeditions. The amount of the grant was $ 125,000.
Contractor is confident that in the near future, when the population of the Earth will exceed 12 billion people. every kitchen will have a 3D printer, and the shelves will not contain the usual products, but cartridges with nutrients and flavors to create “food of the future”.
The shelf life of the contents of such cartridges is at least 30 days. This will solve the problem with the thousands of tons of spoiled food thrown away every day around the world - each cartridge can be used in the printer to the end, before being replaced with a new one. In theory, powders with components can be stored for up to 30 years - this will be useful for space researchers of the future.
In the video embedded in the article, the 3D printer "prints" the chocolate. And by no means from melted chocolate, but from individual components - complex carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, etc. They can be produced from anything, including cheap natural components - for example, what is the difference, in principle, whether a protein molecule is obtained from cow meat or from caterpillar meat?
If you have to compete for food with 12 billion people, then the "unappetizing" origin of the ingredients for your "printed" food, the creator of the system believes, will be easy to close your eyes. Another feature of food produced using 3D printing is the ability to individually adapt each dish to a specific consumer.
It is known that all of us, depending on gender, age, occupation and health status, require nutritional components in different proportions. With the help of new technology, it will be easy to create a recipe that is tailored just for you and fully satisfies all the needs of the body.
The 3D printer featured in the video prints chocolate, but Contractor and his colleagues are currently working on a system that can feed real pizza. We don't know if it will be crispy, but for those who already cannot afford a normal full-fledged meal, this would most likely be indifferent.
Promotional video: