Printed Food May Make TV Dinners Obsolete
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A few decades down the line, today’s youngsters will be telling their grandkids about an old-fashioned item called a microwave meal. If the research of an Israeli-born MIT doctoral student pans out, we’ll have no need for ready meals as we’ll have machines to freshly-assemble our food.
Last year Amit Zoran and his research partner Marcelo Coelho came up with plans for high-tech food-making devices, including a “printer” that has canisters with ingredients — just like a printer has different colored inks — and combines the ingredients to make a chosen dish. You can see the plans for the devices, The Virtuoso Mixer, The Robotic Chef and The Digital Fabricator, on Zoran’s website here. “Our hope is that these designs will provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy,” they wrote in an introduction to the plans.
Now, Haaretz reported in an article released Friday, that Zoran and Coelho are working on an academic article outlining their ideas. Let’s hope its publication brings them recognition and paves the way for the production of their concepts. In time for Yomtov would be nice.
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