Thursday, January 14, 2010

MIT's Food Printer! WTF?!


Have you heard about the MIT project called Cornucopia? No? Well here is a description:
  • Cornucopia's cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user's favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food.
Yep, that's right, Cornucopia is a food printer! And as you can see...not just pretty pictures of food or pictures ON food....printed food. Can Star Trek's synthesizer be far behind?

You know, I got to say one thing though.."done that"....looking at how this is done, yep, anyone of us that has had a can of cheese Whiz, a cracker, pepperoni and Jalapenos has spent a night "printing" up some good eats. lol



MIT Cornucopia via Gizmodo

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't this be like Baby Foods? I mean, puraed T-Bone or Rib Eye in a paste?
We already have-
peanuts=peanutbutter
baked potatoe = mashed potatoes
strawberries+ice and rum= daquri LOL

Beam Me Up said...

I guess it depends on the process and nozzles and the cooking style. You would be surprised at how many processed foods are pastes early on, many quite robust in texture after cooking. I could easily see where you could ask for a plate of nachos and get crispy chips and cheese galore. cakes, cookies icecream chips, pretzels, crackers, snack food heaven.

MarcC said...

Watch a show called "Cake Boss" - they have printers that print edible inks on edible paper to decorate cakes. Combine that with the "3-D" printers that can create (non-edible) objects by laying down layers of powder and you can create any food you want!

Beam Me Up said...

Marc
Yeah, I know what you are talking about. My family was in the food biz for years and we could get pics and all that stuff onto cakes and cookies, but that is again printing ON something. This MIT thing is PRINTING the food, or more to the point is mixing product and dispensing it to be cooked to produce a food product. Usually it takes a whole factory to do what MIT is trying to put on your counter top.

Paul