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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

3d food printing

Legendary Vish Creates Plant-based Salmon through 3D Bioprinting

To create a more sustainable seafood option, three Ph.D. students decided to apply their experience in 3D bioprinting. The result is the Austrian startup Legendary Vish, which uses plant-based ingredients and 3D bioprinting to re-create a realistic salmon fillet.

I spoke to Robin Simsa, the CEO of Legendary Vish this week. He said a benefit to bioprinting salmon is that it offers an alternative to aquaculture and wild salmon. Fish that are raised in aquaculture farms are often fed antibiotics and are at risk for contaminating wild fish with parasites/pathogens, and wild salmon can contain microplastics and heavy metals. Additionally, salmon is susceptible to overfishing since it is a popular seafood and often touted as a “health food.” Legendary Vish’s 3D printed plant-based salmon fillet is free of these toxins and contaminants, and void of potential environmental concerns.

The plant-based salmon fillet looks shockingly real, with a convincing red-orange color and white stripes of fat. When asked if the salmon fillet truly tasted like salmon, he said the flavor and aroma are very accurate. However, they are working on developing an improved “mouth feel” for the product, in hopes of making it a firmer texture. The salmon will contain nutrients and health benefits similar to real salmon, like protein and Omega-3 fatty acids.

Legendary Vish’s salmon is a unique seafood alternative because it is crafted from mushroom protein and algae. Other companies re-creating fish like Shiok, BlueNalu, and Wild Type use cell-based technology to create seafood alternatives. In the world of 3D printing, Redefine Meat and Novameat create plant-based beef and pork alternatives. 

Legendary Vish has not yet received outside capital, but is currently speaking with investors. The company’s goal is to release their bioprinted salmon to the European market by 2022, first focusing on Scandinavian countries, and then turning to larger cities within Europe. Next year, they may begin testing the salmon in certain markets on a small scale.

3D Meat Printing Startup SavorEat Lands $3 Million in Funding

Israel-based SavorEat, a company which has developed a proprietary technology that simultaneously print and cooks plant-based meat substitutes, has landed a $3 million funding round. The funding round was led by investors Mor and Meitav Dash.

The funding round, which was first reported by Israel-based news publication Globes, is the second for SavorEats in the last two weeks. Prior to this investment, the company had raised $1.75 million from Millennium Food-Tech.

The investment comes as interest in 3D printed meat alternatives heats up, especially in Israel. Other startups competing in this nascent market include Redefine Meat (formerly Jet Eat) and Meatech, a company which prints cultured meat cells into steak.

SavorEat’s technology is unique in a couple of ways. The first differentiator is that is uses a plant-based cellulose as a binder. The cellulose is combined with other ingredients such as plant-based fats and protein to make the final product.

Another thing that sets SavorEat apart is that it prints fully cooked pieces of meat.

From my piece on SavorEat earlier this month:

The other big differentiator for SavorEat’s technology is that it prints and cooks simultaneously, which allows the company’s printers to make a fully cooked piece of 3D printed meat like you might see produced by a futuristic appliance like that in the TV show Upload.

The food comes out “ready to be eaten,” said Vizman. “We’re printing one layer, then we cook one layer, print one layer, cook one layer. So at the end, you get something that’s ready to be consumed.”

According to SavorEat CEO Racheli Vizman, the company has signed a partnership with one of the largest fast-food chains in Israel, BBB Group (Burgus Burger Bar), and they plan on testing the product out in the restaurant chain in the next twelve months. From there, the company hopes to use the recent funding round to commercialize and expand using the their recent funding.

KFC Bringing Beyond Meat Plant-Based Chicken to SoCal, 3D Printed Chicken to Russia

KFC announced a partnership with Beyond Meat today to bring plant-based chicken sandwiches to 50 KFC locations across Southern California. Starting on July 20, the Beyond Meat Chicken will be available for a limited time in select KFCs in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

This is the latest in a string of tests KFC has rolled out for the Beyond Chicken. The restaurant chain made it first available in Atlanta, GA last year, followed by tests in Charlotte, NC and Nashville, TN, as well as a one-day promotion in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. In Atlanta, the Beyond Chicken sparked long lines of customers who waited at least an hour to try the plant-based nuggets.

Today’s announcement continues the relationship between Beyond Meat and KFC parent company, Yum Brands. In addition to the previous market tests, this past June Yum China announced that Beyond’s burgers would be available at select KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell stores in mainland China for a limited time as well.

The timing of KFC’s move into California is actually coming at a good time. Sales of plant-based meat, which have been growing over the past few years, have surged even higher during the pandemic, as COVID-19 highlighted limitations of our meat supply and shone a light on the working conditions of meat packers.

But plant-based chicken wasn’t the only alternative protein news to come out of KFC today. Over in Moscow, KFC Russia announced that it was “launching the development of innovative 3D bioprinting technology to create chicken meat in cooperation with the 3D Bioprinting Solutions research laboratory.” In other words, KFC is looking to develop lab-created chicken nuggets. The company says it will receive a final product for testing this fall.

SavorEat Plans to Build an Appliance For The Home That Prints & Cooks Meat

“That’s our goal,” said Vizman when I caught up with her via a zoom call. “Where we can also have, next to a microwave, we can have machines that you know can create variety of products.”

But to get there, first her company is working on building a product that can print and cook food instantly for a large quick service food chains, starting with one of the biggest in Israel, BBB (Burgus Burger Bar).

“We are about to start this testing it in their facility within a year, while we believe that we will be commercialize it in a larger scale two years from closing the financial round that we are now running.”

That financial round Vizman is looking to close is a $3.5 million seed round led by a company called Next Food, an Israel based food tech investment fund. Next Food led SavorEat’s pre-seed round of $1.75 million.

3D printed meat has gained momentum over the past couple years, especially, it seems, in Israel. SavorEat joins two other venture funded Israel based 3D meat printing startups in Redefine Meat (formerly Jet Eat) and Meatech, a company which prints cultured meat cells into steak.

Two things set SavorEat’s technology apart from those and other 3D meat printing startups. The first is the company’s binder, which is a proprietary plant-based cellulose. The cellulose is combined with other ingredients such as plant-based fats and protein to make the final product.

“We’re using the cellulose to bind a variety of fats and proteins and other tastes and flavors and combine a very stable emulsion,” said Vizman.

The other big differentiator for SavorEat’s technology is that it prints and cooks simultaneously, which allows the company’s printers to make a fully cooked piece of 3D printed meat like you might see produced by a futuristic appliance like that in the TV show Upload.

The food comes out “ready to be eaten,” said Vizman. “We’re printing one layer, then we cook one layer, print one layer, cook one layer. So at the end, you get something that’s ready to be consumed.”

This print and cook technology, according to Vizman, will give the cook a high degree of precision of over the final print.

“The nice thing about that is that you can also control the way you cook it. You can decide whether you want it medium, you want in rare, well done. How you want to cook it in the you want to grill it from the inside and rare from the outside.”

The company’s technology was invented by Oded Shoseyov, a serial inventor and entrepreneur who spends much of his time spinning out new ideas from his research lab at Hebrew University. Shoseyov is SavorEat’s chief science officer. Shoseyov and Vizman are joined by other executives from companies like Stratasys (3D printing) and IFF/Frutarom (flavors).

The full interview with Vizman, where we go in depth on the company and its technology, can be read below if you are a Spoon Plus subscriber. Find more information here about subscribing to Spoon Plus. 

Redefine Meat Announces High Volume 3D Printing For Plant-Based Steaks

Redefine Meat announced today it has achieved the ability to produce its 3D printed, plant-based steaks using high-production industrial-level 3D printing capabilities.

This new capability, which the company says allows them to now print up to 50 steaks an hour, will help company roll out its 3D printed steaks to select restaurants in Europe this fall for market tests as it prepares for a broader rollout of its industrial 3D meat printers to meat distributors in 2021.

Redefine’s plant-based steak is printed from three different ingredient packs which company calls ‘Alt-Fat’, ‘Alt-Muscle’ and ‘Alt-Blood.’ According to the company, they have mapped out 70 sensorial parameters that allow its printers to control texture, juiciness, fat distribution and mouthfeel.

“By using separate formulations for muscle, fat and blood, we can focus on each individual aspect of creating the perfect Alt-Steak product,” said company CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit in a release. “This is unique to our 3D printing technology and lets us achieve unprecedented control of what happens inside the matrix of alt-meat.”

When we spoke to Redefine last fall, at the time the company said printers cost up $100,000, but I’m guessing prices will come down slightly as they scale manufacturing of the hardware.

And while 50-steaks-per-hour production volume is certainly higher than early prototypes we’ve seen for plant-based meat production, it’s not quite industrial animal meat processing volume. As a result, the company’s printed steaks are currently only priced for higher end restaurants.

I’m hoping as the volume of production goes up and printer prices eventually drop, the price for the end user will come down enough for the company’s steak products to be sold outside of high-end restaurants at retail.

As part of the announcement, the company also announced a new partner in global flavor conglomerate Givaudan, who worked closely with the company in mapping the flavor components of the company’s Alt-Steak formulation.

BeeHex Launches DecoPod, a Cake Decorating Robot For Grocery Store Bakeries

In May 2019, Beehex expanded beyond its 3D pizza printing roots with the launch of a dessert decorating robot.

A year later, the company looks to be hitting its pastry printing stride with the release of a second product targeted at cake and cookie printing called the DecoPod.

Unlike the company’s first cake printer that was built for high-volume bakeries, the DecoPod is designed for in-store usage at your local grocery store. And, unlike the more professional cake printer, the DecoPod has a touch screen kiosk where customers can select a design and personalize the message that’s printed on the top of the cake.

You can watch the DecoPod in action below:

According to Beehex CEO Anjan Contractor, the DecoPod can finish printing a cake in around 1-2 minutes. He says that this is fast enough for a typical in-store bakery to print up to 600 cakes per week.

Like many parents, I’ve bought my share of customized birthday cakes over the years at the grocery store or Costco and have often had to wait around for someone in the bakery to put a custom message on it. If I had the option of picking up a cake and printing a customized design and special message using an in-store printing robot, I’d jump at the chance, even if I had to pay a little extra.

For Beehex, which had rose to prominence making pizza printers for NASA, it seems like they’ve picked a more earthbound and – at least for now – higher volume business for its second act. Pastry printing is really the only 3D food printing market doing any volume at this point, in part because sugar is the perfect printing medium.

3D Food Printing Hasn’t Really Taken Off – This 3D Printing Exec Turned Pastry Chef Hopes to Change That

3D printing has taken off in countless industries and professions. Food isn’t one of them.

Not that people haven’t tried. There’s been a number of startups and a big company or two working on 3D food printing in recent years, but for the most part the technology’s been adopted by a fairly small handful of culinary adventurers.

One French 3D printing executive thinks food printing’s lack of success is due to those trying to convert their ideas into printed food with general purpose 3D model printing software (software for converting a 3D model to the printer is called ‘slicer’ or ‘slicing software’). This, Marine Coré Baillais says, leads to suboptimal results.

Baillais, the founder of a French 3D food printing consultancy called The Digital Patisserie (La Pâtisserie Numérique), told me that the reason general purpose 3D printing software doesn’t work well is it’s designed to print with materials like plastic filament, not food paste. This usually leads to less than optimal results because a food paste has unique characteristics that make it much different than filament.

“Paste is a viscous material and when you extrude it with a syringe, you need to consider pressure that changes during the 3D printing,” said Baillais. Baillais also said that viscous materials like paste are also difficult to retract during printing, which can lead to defects in the print.

This led the former deputy CEO of French 3D printing services company Sculpteo to think about creating her own software which would allow her to print with things like paste and create a continuous printing path.

“The idea came to me when I started to 3D print food myself, I adapted a syringe on one of my FDM (note: FDM stands for ‘fused deposition modeling’, a 3D printing process) printers,” said Baillais. “I took the software I normally used and it was not working.”

So she got to work on developing software. Her company partnered with the University of Technology at Troyes, France last year and set out to create software that would create specific G-Code (the control language used to communicate with the 3D printer) for a paste-based 3D printer that would relay the nozzle size, layer height, print speed and compensation for the first layer.

The team has gotten far enough to start printing with 3D food printers and they created a video of the software printing (what else) a replica of the south-facing rosace of the Notre-Dame.

slicer software for 3D printed cake

I asked Baillais why she decided to tackle 3D food printing after working at a big 3D printing services startup focused on enterprise applications. She told me it was in part due the frustration that had built up over the past decade at the relative lack of interest from the food industry in using 3D printing. She also has passion for making food, particularly French pastries, so much so that she went to culinary school and got trained as a pastry chef.

With her new pastry chef diploma in hand, she went to work at the age of 44 in the restaurant of the historic Le Meurice hotel. It was at Le Meurice where she also learned why many chefs don’t like working with machines and why the current 3D food printing technology isn’t satisfactory for them.

And so it’s this combo of 3D printing expertise and high-end culinary training that led Baillais and her company to their current state, a working version of their software in just a year. The team is currently working on finding more testers and potential partners to use her software.

Eventually she hopes to commercialize the software either as a stand-alone software application or a plug-in to generic software. She has hopes that by making 3D food printing easier with better software, it will lead to greater adoption of 3D food printing.

“At Sculpteo, we were always building applications with our clients, so they can get the best of this technology that I love,” said Baillais. “I hope that we’ll do the same for the chefs with this new company.”

Mycusini, the First Consumer-Priced 3D Chocolate Printer, Begins Shipping in Europe

While the future of 3D food printing will include everything from printed bread to plant-based steaks, the reality is printing globs of goo for your meal might not be an appetizing thought for most consumers.

But what if it were chocolate?

If you live in my home, where pretty much everyone is a certified chocoholic, there’s a good chance you’d find some takers. Luckily for us, a consumer-priced 3D chocolate printer went from idea to reality recently when the mycusini home 3D chocolate printer started shipping in Europe.

Priced at €298 (~$320), the mycusini is the only chocolate printer on the market today shipping below the $2,000 price point. The product debuted on Kickstarter in June and went on to raise €20,000 (~$22,185 USD). Originally, mycusini was scheduled to ship by the holidays, but the product is weeks ahead of schedule and, according company spokesperson Gerd Funk, regular orders for the Kickstarter were all fulfilled at the end of last month.

Part of the reason Print2Taste, the company behind the mycusini, has been able to get the price so low is that they first developed a professional 3D chocolate printer, the Procusini, in 2015. Since that time, the company has continued to iterate and improve on the Procusini (currently in its fourth generation), including the development of the “choco” ingredient capsules that are similar to the ones used in the mycusini.

As I wrote this past June:

“So how does the mycusini work? Basically like all 3D food printers: by extruding small amounts of material (chocolate in this case) layer by layer. The major downside to the mycusini is it, at least initially, requires the use of custom-made “Choco refills” as the printing material, which are essentially crayon-shaped chocolate cylinders that fit into a stainless steel dispensing cartridge. A single-source supplier is never ideal, and being reliant on a small startup out of Germany for chocolate refills likely means potentially long wait times before you can start printing your next confection.”

While I still would prefer not to rely on a proprietary refill system, I think it would be worth the investment for those who are attracted to the idea of creating elaborate chocolate designs. Because of its low price, I could see the mycusini as a low-risk way for some chefs or chocolatiers to dip their toe into the 3D food printing waters.

So what would you print with the mycusini? The software allows you to freehand draw designs or pick from a pre-designed template, of which there are over 200 designs created by Print2Taste’s in-house chef. According to the company, in the future mycusini users will be able to upload their own designs created through CAD software and shared on an online marketplace.

Like I said, I could see some takers in my home for a product like the mycusini, but because the product is only shipping in Europe, I’ll have to wait before I put it on my holiday wish list.

For those of you living in Europe, the mycusini might make a good last-minute holiday gift for the chocolate nut or aspiring chocolatier in your life, especially since the product looks be on sale through the holidays at €250.

3D Food Printing Startup BeeHex Debuts a Cake Decorating Robot

BeeHex, a company that got its start as a NASA project to create a 3D pizza printer, has gone from pizza to pastries with its latest product, a dessert decorating robot.

The new product, a high-volume machine that “prints” frosting from up to six 62 oz cartridges, uses an object scanning system to calculate the height and shape of items it will decorate. From there, the robot extrudes frosting to decorate the pastry with up to six colors. Depending on the complexity of the design, the robot can finish 15-21 cakes (1/4 sheet) per hour or 120-500 cookies. According to the company, this translates to an increase in productivity up to 66% over traditional (read human) cake and cookie decorators.

The base price for the 3D Decorator is $65 thousand and can be leased for $1,600 per month. While that might seem a bit spendy for a frosting-dispensing robot, it could easily make economic sense for a business with a whole lotta cakes to decorate that is paying a human to do all the work.

And of course, the best proof of whether a customer will pay a certain price is, well, customers, and BeeHex already has those. BeeHex CEO Anjan Contractor told me via email that the product is already shipping and they already have customers in markets ranging from “retail grocers to commissary bakeries.”

BeeHex’s transition from pizza to pastries should not be too surprising since pizza printing, while a neat proof of concept that allowed the company to develop their food printing technology, was never really all that commercially practical. The reality is pizza-making is something that can be done more quickly with human hands since throwing sauce and toppings onto a pie isn’t something that requires the precision of, say, decorating a cake.

That said, the company did raise a $1 million seed round from a pizza chain founder by the name of Jim Grote in 2017. Would the founder of Donatos Pizza be happy with the transition to cookies and cakes? My guess is yes, since at the time of the funding the pizza mogul was already talking up possible applications for BeeHex’s technology beyond pizza:

“After pizza, this technology could be used for a wide range of foods,” Grote told Techcrunch at the time. “The company has mastered the technology around dough, which is a real challenge. So it would make sense to expand into other baked goods, potentially.”

And possibly even personalized nutrition. While the company’s latest product is all about pastry decorating, according to Contractor, the food printing startup is already working on a new project with the US military.

“We also have an active project with the US Army to produce personalized nutrition bars for soldiers using the same hardware platform,” said Contractor.

If you want to see the BeeHex 3D Decorator in action, you can see it next month at the IDDBA (International Dairy Deli Bakery Association) Show in Orlando. Or, alternatively, you can just check out the video of the frosting printing robot below:

BeeHex Automated 3D Decorator

Barilla-Backed BluRhapsody To Launch 3D Pasta Printing E-Commerce Service in 2019

Have you ever wanted to create your own customized pasta inspired by a favorite work of art, company logo or the likeness of a standup comedian?

You may soon get your chance.

That’s because BluRhapsody, the pasta printing spinout of Barilla’s Blu1877 group, will launch an e-commerce platform in the coming months where anyone can order customized pasta printed by a Barilla-developed 3D pasta printer.

The new e-commerce offering is an expansion of an early limited direct-sales business in which BluRhapsody worked with a small handful of Michelin-star chefs to create customized pasta for their restaurants. With the new e-commerce offering, anyone will be able to go to BluRhapsody.com and order pre-designed custom pasta and, eventually, design their own and order it online.

According to BluRhapsody CTO Antonio Gagliardi, the company’s custom-created pasta capability will evolve through a couple phases. At first, customers will be able to go to BluRhapsody and order from a small catalogue of pre-designed pasta.  There will also be the ability for customers to start custom projects in which they work jointly with BluRhapsody to create unique pasta designs. Finally, the company plans to eventually offer a “customize-your-pasta page” where the customers use an interactive online tool to personalize the shape, ingredients, and even taste and texture of the pasta.

The transition from a one-off service that only worked directly with 5-10 chefs to one in which BluRhapsody becomes what is essentially a ‘Sculpteo for pasta’ was made possible because the company has made significant progress over the last couple years in developing their 3D pasta printing technology. According to Gagliardi, the company has moved beyond the initial prototype the company co-developed with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to one based entirely on an internally developed design. With their new patent-pending pasta printer, BluRhapsody has optimized the design to print pasta with much greater efficiency.

Looking forward, I’m excited for an era of customized printed pasta. I can see a world where not only do restaurants big and small design their own unique designs, but average folks like myself create pasta for special occasions or gifts.

And who knows, maybe if Seinfield was a modern day sitcom, Fusilli Jerry would be printed rather than hacked together in Kozmo Kramer’s apartment.

Edible Carving: The World’s First 3D Printing Restaurant

3D printing has become the 21st century’s new manufacturing tool and is regularly applied in industries such as aerospace, automotive, fashion and healthcare, but in the last few years it has also made its way into professional kitchens. FOODINK is one key example of a company pioneering the use of food 3D printing and its founder, Antony Dobrzensky, believes the technology is an unstoppable force for the food industry.

FOODINK’s best known project and biggest milestone so far is “the world’s first 3D printing restaurant,” where everything is 3D printed on site, including the tables and chairs, the utensils and the food – all nine courses of it! The premiere took place in in Shoreditch, London, lasted three days and hosted 12 guests per day. The restaurant was later showcased in Barcelona and is now set for more worldwide destinations.

The idea was conceived and executed by Dobrzensky, (entrepreneur, technologist, investor) and his multi-talented international team, including chefs Mateu Blanch of Spanish molecular gastronomy restaurant La Boscana, and Joel Castanye an elBulli alumni with Arthur Mamou-Mani as the design advisor. Aside from this core team, Dobrzensky also brings in an outer circle of architects, artists, chefs, designers, engineers, futurists, industrials, inventors and technologists for advice and guidance.

The 3D printers themselves are made by ByFlow, a company based in Maastricht in The Netherlands. ByFlow has specialized in 3D printing since 2009 and in 2015 they developed a 3D food printer called ‘Focus’ which quickly entered the food industry. It’s no wonder FOODINK has partnered with the Dutch company as it says on their official website they believe “we can change the way people make and experience food.” For Dobrzensky too, 3D food printing isn’t just a throwaway trend and he says his team has devoted their knowledge, expertise and creativity to ensure that this revolutionary vision becomes a present experience.

The idea of 3D printed food may seem far fetched or perhaps something for the distant future, but when you consider the drastic changes already happening in the food industry now you can see why restaurants are interested. For example, flavour matters, but in a world dominated by images, what food looks like is becoming more and more important. According to a recent study by Maru/Matchbox 69 percent of millennials take photos of their food before eating it and many of those will be uploaded to social media. It’s no surprise then that Instagram has the power to influence the food we eat and the environment we eat it in. The prosperity for a certain image to go viral is driving restaurants to serve up eye catching dishes and fancy decorative drinks. FOODINK has shown that a 3D food printer can really help a restaurant stand out from competitors by creating new food designs which are impossible to do by hand or with traditional techniques.

Often food can compromise on flavour when the goal is to make it photogenic but for Dobrzsensky he believes they have found a way to not only retain a delicious taste but to keep it nutritious. When asked in a munchies interview, Dobrzsensky stated that “This food is made from all-natural ingredients and is more healthy and nutritious than food in other restaurants.” Chef Castanye adds that “We use the same ingredients but just served in a different way.” It seems that one of the most important factors to FOODINK’s approach is that they don’t disregard the chef and he/she still plays a pivotal role in the process. The fresh ingredients need to be chosen, cooked, blended and put in to tubes and there needs to be the right consistency in order to print successfully.

Food 3D printing is an exciting move for the world of food and technology and there’s a lot of potential. The stage for this change wasn’t set overnight. Years of innovation has led to the precipice of the food 3D printing revolution, and it seems that it is just a matter of time before we see advancements in speed and material capabilities that together will push the  technology in to a more user friendly domain. At some point, it might be as common to find a food 3D printer in a restaurant as it is to find a thermomix. We can only wait and see!

 

Edible Carving: Eating an Ecosystem

Edible Growth is a bite-sized  “mini vegetable garden with crispy plants and mushrooms”. It is also a 3D food printed project created by Eindhoven-based food designer Chloé Rutzerveld whose passion lies in rethinking the ways food is produced and consumed. The concept behind Edible Growth involves a specially printed outer casing made from dough that contains “edible soil” and various organisms (yeast, seeds and spores). Five days after printing, the plants and mushrooms germinate while the yeast ferments the solid inside into a liquid, after which they start to grow and poke through the holes of the casing – at which point it is ready to eat.

Most 3D food printers print using raw materials, which must be processed into a puree, powder or paste so that the printer can successfully extrude the food substance. However, in the case of fruit and vegetables, the process causes a significant decrease in nutritional value and loss of texture. Consequently, it is difficult to print healthy food and most 3D printed food is made from dough, sugar or chocolate. On her website Rutzerveld states that with the rise of more high-tech food and new production methods, consumers are becoming increasingly more concerned about their health as well as the quality and ‘realness’ of their food. This is why Rutzerveld has made it her mission to find a way of 3D food printing healthy, functional food.

Rutzerveld is not just proposing a way of using the 3D food printer as an extruder but wants to refigure the printer as not only a tool to enable natural growth but also to enhance it. Her design is a visualisation of how an edible ecosystem could look and opens up the possibility of a new food category – nutrient rich food that is eaten while still “in growth”. The design is currently a concept as current food printing techniques are not advanced enough and would involve several years of research and development. Nonetheless, there are many people interested in it’s potential. Rutzerveld’s main aim is to stimulate and provoke scientists, food technologists and designers to think differently when creating future food products.

Rutzerveld’s concept is not only a way to make a unique and new type of health food but she also sees how it can have environmental benefits. She foresees the possibility of home growth foods drastically reducing the need and strain on agricultural land. At the same time she believes post harvest and harvest labour would become unnecessary  and that farmers would be the providers of raw materials, not the fruits and vegetables themselves. As a result the consumer would become the farmer and will be more involved in the production of their food, without spending a lot of time gardening.

Edible Growth began in 2014 and has already been showcased in many countries around the world including the US, Asia, Canada and many countries in Europe. It has also been featured in several websites and magazines such as Frame, Mold and Vice. Four years on and the interest in Rutzerveld’s concept is by no means declining. Edible Growth is currently being displayed in Brazil’s Museum of Tomorrow and it is also featured in Rutzerveld’s book which is being launched this month (October 12th) – with world wide availability from early 2019.