More exotic topics are emerging within the 3D printing industry, and printed food certainly cuts the mustard in the race for raising the attention – literally. This week we learned that the billionaire Peter Thiel is making a donation to a new start up Modern Meadow with a goal to develop bio-printed food products, namely meat. Along these news came that Google is now providing 3D printed pasta for their employees in their headquarters.
Modern Meadow, the company with ambitious plans on offering us ethically produced meat is already planning their first steps in this foray. The first challenge is to “fabricate 3D cellular sheets composed of porcine cells” and then allowing those sheets to mature into muscle tissue inside of a bioreactor with electrical stimulation inside. In more common terms, their first menu item we should expect to see is minced animal muscle strip which can be used as a patty for burgers or sausages.
Bio-printed food such as meat does have interesting opportunities ahead as growing meat in its organic means is very resource intensive and the developing countries are acquiring a taste for it in increasing number. Bio-printed food can also provide an alternative option for people who are not currently eating meat products for religious reasons. Modern Meadows is in fact planning to market their initial offering to different religious groups hungry for animal protein.
Moving back on the menu, we saw Google who is known for offering their employees many culinary feats in their multitude of onsite cafeterias, providing interesting technological advances in their kitchen. Bernard Faucher, chef that works the Google HQ, came up with the idea of cooking custom designed pasta for the employees using 3D printers. According to Faucher, everyone has their favorite shape of pasta and the Chefs can now produce the food according to Googlers’ individual taste.
Perhaps the two companies can join forces and come up with the first restaurant offering a menu of full of 3D printed delicacies. Certainly in the case of Google, we hope they will stick with providing us with the search results on how to find one.
