Someday you will be able to print your own dinner

[The Straight Story]

Someday you will be able to print your own dinner

Here's a news story that should stir deep horror in even the most jaded reader. Cornell University will build a food printer.

Personal home technology has changed the world, and many people - for example io9 writers - depend on it for their livelihoods. Unfortunately, we have officially Gone Too Far. No, there isn't going to be a pen of velociraptors inexplicably next door to a theme park. Instead, there will be "printed" food.

Cornell University is building a 3D food printer. The contraption will allow people to load vials of liquified food into the printer as inks. They can then set a 'recipe' that will make the printer arrange the liquified ingredients in a particular way. The printer will do the rest, presumably while the person chugs a bottle of pepto-bismol and puts their head between their knees.

The engineers of the food printer are stessing its advantages. The liquid ingredients will store well and use space in the kitchen efficiently. Each person will be able to slightly tweak recipes to make cookies more flaky or meat more moist, according to their personal taste. The food printer can also pull off some neat arrangements, like embedding letters in cookies. It's even been able to build a 'dome' of turkey and individual servings of sushi. It would also be a great concenience to those with no culinary ability. That gourmet truffle up top, for example, is a turkey cube with celery filling.

http://io9.com/5717803/someday-you-will-be-able-to-print-your-own-dinner

[Autumn Colors]

1. First thing this made me think of...

Image of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard at the replicator: "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."

[1monster]

5. Ditto! First thought was: replicator. STAR TREK was always ahead of its time.

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. me too. lol n/t

[silverweb]

12. Ditto.

It will happen eventually.

[DCKit]

14. Children, sheesh. Jane Jetson did it first. nt

[JVS]

17. It made me think of Arthur Dent failing to get a good cup of tea.

[Angry Dragon]

2. Is that before or after the revolution??

[RandomThoughts]

3. As metaphor.

Some of the metaphors not taken from best places have some 'its a cookbook' doctrine in it.


Even story of old dreams can be seen that way by some people.


Think of it as 'you are what you eat' and learning. That reverses the concept of someone being destroyed as food. And most food is better thoughts and hope in my view.

[Denninmi]

4. Oh, yummy.

This stuff would bear about as much of a resemblance to real food as a fruit roll-up does to a tree ripened, white fleshed freestone peach from my backyard orchard, picked and eaten straight off the limb on a hot, sunny August afternoon, when the warm, sweet juices drip slowly from the soft, rich flesh and the aroma wafts through the warm, still air while a cicada plays a love song in the trees above.

So, I can "write" about food too, but that doesn't make my peach any more real to the reader that the product of their "food printer" would be to the taster.

Yuck.

Yuck, yuck, yuck, in fact.

We need LESS highly processed, highly refined swill in our diets, not more.

[Lucinda]

6. That picture was horrible.

"Ick" doesn't really cover it.

[valerief]

7. So do we print our feces, too? nt

[3waygeek]

15. No, that's the job of the Moonie Times n/t

[madinmaryland]

26. BEST COMMENT OF THE YEAR!!1!!

:rofl:

[hootinholler]

8. I'm still waiting for the flying cars we were promised. n/t

[customerserviceguy]

9. I'd print you one, but I'm low on paper, toner, and spray rubber.

Geeks who think that eating is just refueling, trying to impose their concept of the 'ideal' diet on the rest of us.

[former9thward]

21. I would settle for a body jet pack.

Those were supposed to be standard by the 1980s.

[Sheepshank]

10. Gonna need to stock up on ink cartridges

will they cost more or less than Top Ramen Noodles?

[madinmaryland]

13. Soylent Green. nt

[Xicano]

16. This Organic Soup Will All Be Genetically Engineered By Monsanto or the Like.

Now if they engineered a replicator to atomically replicate a piece of "real" food, then, maybe.

Good article though, thanks for posting it The Straight Story. :hi:


Peace,
Xicano

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Ah Star Trek strikes another notch...

and as we move into eight billion yes that makes sense.

[LynneSin]

19. i've seen this done alreadyon cooking shows

Some of the specialty cooks that do techno-cooking will use printers with edible inks to create their food. But usually as part of real edible foods.

[Zanzobar]

20. Jeez

Maybe the dweebs working on this can print themselves up some dates to eat with. Then print up their 2.5 children and white picket fence.

Dinks, all.

[Odin2005]

24. -1,000,000 for nerd-bashing

[GreenPartyVoter]

25. Yeah, really!

[SheilaT]

22. The really sad thing about this is

that it's not that hard to cook.

[Odin2005]

23. Cool, just like on Star Trek.

This should please PETA.

[struggle4progress]

27. *beep* *beep* *beep*

please replace the guar gum cartridge

*beep* *beep* *beep*
please replace the cellulose gel cartridge

*beep* *beep* *beep*
please replace the mono- and diglycerides cartridge

[Pancho Sanza]

28. I'm waiting for the econo model with only 2 cartridges

steak
and
potatos

:D

[struggle4progress]

29. not lookin forward to the soup, salad or dessert you print