3D printing food: What about 3D printed meat?

Posted By Lucie Gaget on Dec 7, 2018 | 0 comments

It might sound like a joke, but food 3D printing is a real thing. We already talked about chocolate 3D printers on the blog, and today, we are going to take a look at 3D printed meat. Indeed, 3D printing meat is becoming possible and several projects have been made in the last few years. Yes, your red meat could be 3D printed. How is it even possible to 3D print meat? What are the actual projects being developed?

Let’s see how food 3D printing is evolving and how it could change our diet. You could have some 3D printed meat on the table for your next Christmas and New Year’s Eve dinners?

3D printing meat: What has been made?

Novameat 3D printing meat-free steak

Do you know about Novameat, the Spanish startup? A first meat-free project has been initiated by this startup with ingredients providing amino acids like rice, seaweed, and peas. All of these healthy ingredients are then turned into food paste which can be 3D printed. Thanks to these ingredients, the food paste imitates the proteins we can find in real meat.

https://www.dezeen.com

Giuseppe Scionti, an Italian bioengineer is at the head of this project. He already worked on bioprinting projects, creating synthetic tissues, like artificial corneas and 3D printed artificial skin. Working on regenerative medicine can definitely help to recreate meat products. For this Italian scientist, meat-free steak would be a great solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.

This healthy vegan steak doesn’t look really tasty, the company admits that there is still room for improvement. But, this synthetic meat can mimic the texture of beef, this is already quite impressive.

Novameat went further. They not only 3D printed a steak made of artificial meat, Giuseppe Scionti designed a 3D printed chicken breast, and this meat is also plant-based.

https://www.dezeen.com

Jet-Eat and the 3D printed vegan steak

Additive manufacturing could even become a solution to build an alternative to animals for the production of meat. That is the project developed by Jet-Eat, an Israeli start-up which developed its own technology. What was their goal? Jet-Eat wants to create a vegan meat able to fool any carnivores. Quite a complex challenge!

The idea of this project is to recreate the structural components of the meat. In order to do so, the company decided to develop its own technology, using a software to create their digital file and a food 3D printer able to recreate complex structures.

The company don’t want to stop here, their project is not to make an experience in order to show that it is actually possible to 3D print vegan meat, they actually want to create bigger but affordable quantities! They want to be as close to possible to real meat, regarding the structural components, but also the flavor!

Jet-Eat was founded at the beginning of 2018 and currently has five employees. This 3D printed vegan steak is expected for 2020. We will keep you updated!   

Food 3D printing: Offering several advantages

Complex designs

As we just saw with these 3D printed meat projects, food 3D printing is a reality and some serious projects are already on their way. You could find 3D printed food in your plate sooner than expected. The benefits of additive manufacturing are not only for animal meat products. Indeed it can also be quite helpful for chefs, in pastry for example. 3D printing allows creating really complex designs, thanks to the use of 3D software offering a maximum freedom in the design! Really impressive 3D designs could be made thanks to food 3D printers!

3Dprint.com

Printing artificial meat against climate change?

The production of animal meat has a major impact on greenhouse gas emissions and on climate change. For those who are not ready to give up on meat, 3D printed artificial meat could be a potential solution.

We are able to print more and more 3D printing materials, and food products could become a common 3D printed material. 3D printed food products and artificial meat have quite a bright future! 3D bioprinting, thanks to work on stem cells, is also promising and is helping in the development of these food products.

Additive manufacturing could actually be a great revolution in the food industry.

We can’t 3D print food for the moment, but if you have another 3D printing project, you should definitely use our online 3D printing service. You only have to create your 3D file thanks to your CAD software, and upload it on our website to get it 3D printed!
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