Is this about current food printers, or EP makers? Also, Steel Accord thread! Do we by any chance have a gourmet chef that can insult people for devaluating his profession by insinuating they can be replaced by machines? That would be freaky;)

Smokeskin wrote:

Is this about current food printers, or EP makers?

There are current food printers?? I think we are talking about EP and using a full cornucopia machine to produce food of a better quality than an EP maker is capable of.

How dare you try and tout your anarcho-cuisinist ideas as superior to reputation-gastronomics ! I think we can agree either one is better than the hyperepicureans,who sell genetically deficient morphs to the masses in order to boost sales of Lysine Burgers™ ! Eclair Phase: the Rollplaying game of Transfatty Cuisine and Horror There, obligatory Steel Accord thread drama accomplished!

Right now, from what i can tell, food printing is very much in its infancy. The selections of what you can make are dependent upon what can be stored in the printer (and you thought INK cartridges were expensive!). So for general printing there are feeds of shelf stable ingredients(protein,starch,fat, flavorants, and water) that get blended together and squirted into a cooking environment where they get heated or chilled to doneness. In an Eclipse Phase setting the options are far more varied because the tools for printing are more diverse. The most basic makers produce simple gels and flavored puddings, so...old style astronaut food! The "it tastes like baby food!" line from Robocop usually comes to mind when i think of this level. A step up brings a lot of "mock" foods. These are easily stored or manufactured ingredients that can be made to resemble more natural goods. Soy or mycoprotein molded into shape and flavored to taste like whatever you like -almost. Higher up the food chain we have the limits of current technology, printed meat! A thin layer of cells laid out on a scaffold and stimulated to become muscle tissue. The layer is rolled up and held together with transglutaminease until the desired size is reached. The meat lozenge™ would then be prepared however you like with no extraneous blood vessels or gristle to be found. Vegetables may be similarly prepared, my only parallel is the harvesting of algae to produce nori, so vegsticks may be the bane of childrens dinner plates in the future! I wonder if a "wurst" cuisine would develop ,with various habitats having their own special recipe for sausage...Locuswurst anyone? Beyond that and you have medical tech being used for food prep. A healing vat could whip up a turkey for dinner just as easily as making a morph. That opens up some disturbing possibilities if you think too deeply about it. The Scum Barge Chemists taste for human bacon comes to mind! So far I've focused on the making of ingredients, not the actual process of cooking.The many and varied methods of food prep makes it difficult to imagine a single appliance that could accomplish what a skilled ego and a set of hands could. Even the molecule by molecule assembly capabilities of nanotech would be taxed trying to replicate the gluten mesh of pizza dough. I imagine its best for flavoring purposes like a universal spice mill wherein nanotech can make any flavor molecules you'd need in a medium that can then be mechanically ground to the desired coarseness. Bon Appétit !

thezombiekat wrote:

There are current food printers??

On [url=http://drwho.virtadpt.net/pictures/scifest-2012/scifest-201203.html]this photogallery page[/url] are some photographs of a food-fabber constructed in late 2011 or early 2012... the tiny octopodes printed on tortillas out of Cheez Whiz were quite tasty.

I doubt 3d printed food is going to taste properly though.

Doctor: like++ I imagine this won't taste like non-printed food, no. But that doesn't mean it will taste BAD. Preserved meat doesn't taste like fresh meat, but it also gave us beef jerky and salted ham.

But ...chocolate! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4-NYxo6tcjg :) More seriously, it really depends on any number of factors. Some foods may lend themselves to 3d printing and others will wane as the systems become ubiquitous. There's a vegan caviar that's made by dropping a flavored liquid into a coagulation solution. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0sOYcVa4RVI just to give some idea of how eating could be different. By the time the technology reaches EP levels there may be no discernible difference between foods as we know them and synthesized meals

That is true. However, I was working and presenting at a display table ([url=http://hacdc.org/]Yay, HacDC![/url]) and could not get away long enough to pick up a decent lunch.