PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE

As I am nearing the end of my blog for Genius Hour, I have stumbled across a certain website named foodnavigator.com that presented to me some valuable information about the new ideas of 3-D printing food, and one fact surprised me. This 3-D printing food idea that I had for my Genius Hour dates way back to 2010 with a company called Biozoon.

Here's the backstory.

Biozoon's Smoothfood concept project was introduced in 2010 by the German company, the project being aimed at elderly at nursing homes with mastication and swallowing problems. This also corresponds with one of  my previous blogs about the Dutch TNO organization.

Moving on, FoodNavigator talked with Biozoon's CEO Matthias Kuck about the subject. He said that:

"We Are a food company specializing in texturising food. We take fresh food items and transform them into different textures. The aim is that the food will taste like and look similar to the real food but will be available for all to eat as it can be without swallowed without being chewed."

The company created a food processing project called PERFORMANCE, the acronym meaning PERsonalized FOod using Rapid MAnufacturing for the Nutrition of elderly ConsumErs, aimed at manufacturing convenient, personalized food with a 3-D printer. The company received a 2.9 million Euros of funding from the EU and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

It has also been sponsored by an unusual 10 industry partners which is very untypical for this kind of research project. The researchers are not only aiming to produce the foods for elderly, but are aiming to mass-produce them on a global scale, which is great.

Kuck believed that the concept wouldn't just change the lives of the elderly but revolutionize the food industry as well, which shows how many people are probably on the bandwagon. However, he added that the biggest challenge would be convincing the public that they were using fresh food with no chemicals, only texture was changed, which is the big problem as of now, the persuasion of the general public. But once word gets out that the stuff is all-pure, people will start paying more attention.

That's all for this blog post, stick around for the next post, which'll just be a big shout-out to the audience, a VLog and then that's all because in June, I will be working with classmates on formulating a TED talk. Gotta say, I am nervous but I am confident that I can do this.

April VLog

Hey guys, it's me, Markus and I'm back with another one of my Vlogs for the month of April. Hope you enjoy and please don't get creeped out at my unaligned set of teeth at the end of the video.    

Marketing the 3-D Printing Food Process?

Marketing The 3-D Printing Food Process?

As 3-D printing takes it's first steps in the marketing industry, it's market statistics in constant growth and inspiring many new technologies, people are starting to catch on to the trend, as it may reshape living on Earth, from foods to mechanical products.

As the market statistics progress, you might see more printers coming around offering various new technologies in prototyping. After all, these prices for 3-D printing material are slowly going down, down, down, while advancements in technology will keep rapidly growing as seen below.

But how much of that graph is food technology?

With traditional farming becoming old, outdated and not easily accessible to some parts of the world such as lands where there are lots of drought, and tundra as well, many strategies are being used to get foods to different parts of the world, but my tomatoes aren't just right when they're thrown into a truck to be sent 2000 miles away and come to my local supermarket overripe, instead of fresh tomatoes from Nonna's backyard which are just right.

The problem with that is that we can't get them year- round, but what if 3-D printed food with the same nutritional content and taste which can be mass-produced using the right technology can solve that problem. That is what my genius hour is about. Not random stuff all slapped together.

Now here are the facts that I have deciphered from the limited amount of info the internet can give me.

• The public hasn't paid much attention to the food printing process but since 3-D printed technology is on the rise and the public is seeing how it works, without a doubt, they will probably catch on to 3-D printing food as a new way to ensure no one goes hungry when weather does't permit the right growth. This ties in with the fact that global warming is a huge threat around the world.
• Traditional farming will probably come to an end, replaced by new growth methods and 3-D printing as well. For more details, I'd recommend the October 2015 issue of Popular Science, the topic being called "The Future of Food".
• 3-D printed food isn't only going to be for the elderly with dysphagia as discussed in my last post. This may become a worldwide topic, so stay tuned.

Yeah it's real and coming to a store or something like that near you! Ciao guys, have a nice day and all that jazz. I'm out.

Lets get back down to business, Shall we?

Let's Get Back Down To Business

Okay, guys I'm back after a hiatus of more than a month. Hope all of you had a great march break. I surely did.Anyways, it's back to the drawing board this month as the time is winding down before my grade 6 class and I have to present TED talks at the end of June. Until then, we have another two months of collecting research, so enjoy.

These next few blogs will be about STATISTICS of not just of 3-D printed food distribution, but their market statistics and values, helping me learn about how much 3-D printed food has helped world famine issues worldwide (yay), and the price of production (boo).

An estimation from the source of statista.com estimates the industry could be worth an estimated 10.8 BILLION DOLLARS by 2021. WOW THAT'S A LOT OF FULL POCKETS........... 

Alright, back to the point, I have to figure out how much of that is food. That's my task.

As of now, prototyping is the dominant reason of why 3-D printing is rising in market statistics, it's dominance in statistics showing itself in the pie graph above. These prototypes take many forms such as artificial limbs and another form is food as we know it. With ever-decreasing prices in 3-D printing software, the possibilities for 3-D printing have been dramatically increased since their debut in the market in the 1970's to the 1980's. These new stats are very good for creating newer, efficient resources using 3-D printers.

According to 3dprinting.com, the two dominant fields of food where rapid prototyping play a huge role are 

• Food prototyping and production and
• Food and beverage packaging prototypes.

So, in review, the 3-D food printing industry is still taking it's first steps as of now, but we are looking forward to seeing it grow over the next few years and create and better resources for the world, to possibly solve world famine problems.Well, at least I am.

Next blog is April 29th and so is my VLog. Until then, goodbye for now.

February VLog

February VLog

My VLog for the month of February is about my recent findings of 3-D printing facts. This one is about 3-D printed food hitting shelves in hitting shelves in various countries! Wow. Hope you enjoy, whoever is watching.

3-D printing's Commercial Uses

3-D Printing and it's Commercial Uses: Softer, Easy-to-Chew Foods 

Because 3-D printing is only starting to be known by people and the printing abilities are vague and still need exploration, you never know what you are going to get, especially from my blogs. This blog post can be surprising to some people because of 3-D printing foods being in close contact with healthcare. Awesome.

In my early stages of research on 3-D printing, I was only looking up how 3-D printing works not the benefits of 3-D printing food for society and I'm sorry because my topic is how 3-D printing food could solve world famine problems.

It is known that not all people could eat some of the foods we do. And this blog is a close up of how 3-D printing food helped stop the elderly in some retirement homes from going hungry.

All of the early examples of 3-D printed foods such as the ones you see when looking them up on Google have all used simple, processed, single-ingredient pastes, powders and purees. Nobody is able to manufacture something complex as let's say a burger with all the fixings. Cobbling together all necessary ingredients and structures to make the food has been a bit too much of a challenge so far.

A researcher at the TNO or the Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research named Kjeld van Bommel realized this matter. So rather than reinventing an organic object, van Bommel says that they will create personalized novel consumable foods with personalized nutritional content.


To that end, his group at the TNO is researching 3-D printing food to help seniors who are suffering from dysphagia and have trouble chewing and swallowing food. Their meals are given to them. These people get their meals in an unsightly and unappealing mush of pureed chicken and broccoli for example leading to appetite loss and malnourishment. Van Bommel has a grant from the EU to develop 3-D printed replicas of those foods, only softer and easier to chew.

This concludes my blog. See you in a week or two. Bye for now.

Planning Out the 3-D Printing Food Process

Planning Out the 3-D Food Printing Process

So it is established that 3-D printed food exists and it tastes good, but what happens next with the printer having to manipulate the software for good taste? Let's figure that out.

3-D printing companies are all starting to get more famous each day, while the more well-known NASA are using 3-D technology to make simple meals for the astronauts, which make the food choices in the International Space Station have more variety. Instead of food being sent up 100000
kilometers in the sky, machines are starting to make food supplies less of a hassle for the astronauts.

But how is printing the all planned out? As in: "Hey, printer, cook so-and-so, with blah blah blah on the side, can you do that for me please?"

Simply, it isn't that simple.

See, what has to be done is that a blueprint has to be created first, consisting of the things that you'll need to use to build the object, layer by layer. I think I discussed that the blueprints have to be designed by the computer using a CAD, or computer aided design (see right). The designs are then corrected, if there are malfunctions in the design such as holes. Then the design goes through a piece of software called a "slicer".

The slicer coverts the model into many thin layers by using G-code software. The G-code file can then be printed using 3-D printing client software (which loads the G-code and directs it on what to do).

Typical resolution for 3-D printers describes layer thickness in dots per inch (DPI).The typical layer thickness is about 250 DPI, a bit thinner than paper. The particles in the food are about 500 DPI each.

So it simply goes layer by layer using various materials, copying the CAD, right?

Yup, layer by layer. Wasn't too hard to understand, right?

Well, it looks easier said than done.

Yeah...- WHOOPS! Talking to myself again. Do that a lot. Farewell for now, guys.