Thanks for your discussion! As much as I’m fascinated in my research, I very much agree with two of you that 3D food printing is still not a down to earth way of food production. One big obstacle is just as what @nanoscientist described, to get the right consistancy of the food puree for the printing to get started in the first place; even when that is achieved, how much do consumers like the the (mushy) texture as @Roy mentioned above?
One thing I noticed is that our research and science world tend to focus a lot on novelty, innovation, and benefits that WE perceive, but how much of the scientifically studied benefits translate to our consumers? And how long does the novelty of a food last before consumers are stopped by the more realistic considerations such as price, availability, variety, convenience aspect, safety of the food… to name a few? In my opinion, consumer expectations should be studied and addressed BEFORE we proceed further in technology and product development. And consumer studies that basically ask " hey how much do you like this single piece of printed chocolate under our lab setting?" simply do not provide valuable insights. So far I dont see how 3D printed foods would be fully accepted from the consumer point of view, even though technically it is mature enough to be adopted for a small scale (or maybe not lol).
