Unbelievable: A 3D Printer That Can Print Food, No More Need for Cooking

For my starter, I have a potato lattice filled with cod and pureed peas — a nouvelle cuisine take on fish, chips and mushy peas, if you like.
The main course is more traditional; Instead of scouring the High Street for consumer goods — anything from shoes to washing machine spare parts — we'll soon be printing them out ourselves at home.
In 2011, the world's first printed car rolled off the presses. The Foodini works on exactly the same principle.
Although I only get to use a basic prototype at Foodini's Spanish headquarters in Barcelona, the version that will hit the streets next year is roughly the size of a microwave.
Its sleek design will hide all the working parts, but users will be able to look in and watch as the ingredients are automatically pumped through the 'extruder', or nozzle.
The shapes it forms — and the quantities emitted — are controlled by a computer.
The Foodini can hold five capsules, each potentially containing a different ingredient (in much the same way a normal printer has cartridges containing different coloured ink).
As and when each ingredient is required, the computer automatically switches from one capsule to another and then pumps their contents through the extruder.
The Foodini does not cook the food, so once the item has been completed it would then have to be baked, boiled or fried before eating.
So, for example, someone wanting to eat a lasagne would simply choose the item on the computerised display and load up three capsules as specified — one with meat, one with white sauce and one with pasta dough.
A layer of meat would be pumped into an oven-proof tray on top of which would be overlayed a layer of pasta followed by a layer of white sauce.
'Foodini takes on those parts of preparing food that are hard or time-consuming to make by hand, and which you may otherwise tend to buy as a "convenience" food," explains Lynette, an American, married to a Spaniard, who previously worked in Microsoft's marketing and PR department.
'One of our goals is to streamline some of cooking's more repetitive activities — forming dough into breadsticks, or filling and forming individual ravioli — to encourage more people to eat healthy, home-made meals. — the Foodini could be taking the strain of those fiddly party canapes, those endless mince pies, and even an intricate festive decoration on top of your Christmas cake.
As for the main event — turkey and all the trimmings — that's likely to keep the computer whizz-kids scratching their beards for a few more years yet.
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