Food Texture: Design by 3D printing

The food industry is experiencing a paradigm shift. People’s growing awareness of the food that they consume and the drive for new customized sensory experiences is pushing for the development of new technologies that can satisfy these new consumers’ standards. One of these novel technologies, 3D Printing, has been around for a while, however, only in 2007 was it applied for the first time in the production of food structures.

This technology has attracted a lot of attention for its versatility and potential application in various production sectors, such as aerospace, electronics, architecture, and medicine but it is becoming more apparent that in the food production sector this technology has the potential to be used to create personalised food products, enabling the creation of food products with specific design characteristics, flavours and colours, geometric structures, textures, and nutritional profiles.

Texture Analysis in Research: Its Importance for 3D Printed Foods

3D printing is becoming mainstream as a design and manufacture tool in many industries. One of these is the food industry, where innovation is a key marketing strategy; consumers will buy into products that have a new spin on ‘fun’ or ‘healthy’. It is a very useful tool in the food industry, bringing digital design to life through the medium of an edible product and allowing full customisation.

Using this tool, a food product or a whole meal can have its ingredients tailored to meet the needs of a patient in hospital or a care home, leading to a better recovery. 3D printing also has the potential to make life easier for those people who use health trackers. There is a possibility that in the future, the user’s fitness tracker can send data to the 3D printer, which will output a meal perfectly tailored to that person’s requirements.

Texture Analysis in Research: 3D printing Applications

At the University of Milan scientists have been researching 3D printed multi-compartment capsular devices for two-pulse oral drug delivery. 

The resistance to deformation of printed and moulded capsular devices was measured under compression using their TA.XTplus Texture Analyser.

This study helped to develop delivery methods for enhanced customisation of drug combinations. 

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