WASP is in the business of making every aspect of life easier through 3D printing, from spinal care to architecture to athletics, and a lot more. Recently, the Italian company started exploring 3D printed food. Nothing that WASP does is for novelty purposes, so the fact that it’s looking into 3D printing food is a sure sign that food printing really is finally moving from novelty chocolates to more substantive fare. According to the WASP team, they were first inspired to begin researching 3D food printing last year with the opening of Food Ink., an entirely 3D printed pop-up restaurant.
As WASP’s mission is to solve serious problems that afflict people, they began by focusing on the sector of the population that suffers from celiac disease. The illness is serious business – even small amounts of gluten-containing foods, like crumbs, can trigger reactions, so those who have the disease need to be extremely careful to keep anything they ingest away from foods that do contain gluten. This makes eating at restaurants particularly challenging, as gluten is everywhere.
WASP wants to enable restaurants to more easily create miniature gluten-free kitchens inside their regular kitchens – a difficult task as it stands now. With a 3D printer, restaurants would be able to have a separate piece of equipment strictly for preparing gluten-free foods, with no risk of contamination from the other food preparation equipment in the rest of the kitchen. The company enlisted the help of Francesco Favorito, a chef who specializes in gluten-free foods and who founded Zeroinpiú, a line of gluten-free flour and pastry mixes.
According to WASP, a lot was learned from the early trials; for example, the addition of heated butter increased fluidity and helps the mixture extrude more smoothly, and even though the main purpose of the printer is to create safe foods for people with celiac disease, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to to create fancy and complex shapes that would be impossible to create by normal methods.
WASP still has quite a bit of research, development and refining to do. The extruder needs to be compatible with strict sanitary regulations, and they’re also looking to create a more intuitive, user-friendly software. I’m wondering if they’ll also come up with a way to cook the food in a way that doesn’t require the use of the main oven in a restaurant kitchen. It’s a big first step, though, in better accommodating the needs of those with gluten allergies – and, as WASP points out, the same technology can also be used to cater to other dietary needs. In addition, zero waste is a major priority for WASP, and 3D printing also allows for customized portion sizes, the better to cut down on food waste. You can see a quick demonstration below:
Discuss in the Gluten-Free 3D Printing forum at 3DPB.com.