Pureed foods are usually served to patients who suffer from swallowing difficulties known as dysphagia. Health professionals have used silicone molds to shape pureed foods to make them more visually appetizing.
But this process requires time and a lot of storage but inks for 3D printed foods generally are made from pureed foods in liquid or semi-solid form, and then 3D printed by extrusion from a nozzle and assembled layer by layer.
Less additives
Dehydrated foods and freeze-dried powders used as food inks generally contain a high percentage of food additives, such as hydrocolloids (HC).
The high concentration of HC usually changes the taste, texture and aroma of printed foods, making them unappetizing to patients with dysphagia. But a new 'ink' process to produce food on 3D printers with fresh and frozen vegetables better preserves its nutritional properties and flavor.
This new process has been developed by the research team from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH).
The optimized ink formulations show excellent 3D printability, minimal water seepage, and dense microstructures with minimal HC. Using fresh vegetables instead of freeze-dried foods serves to preserve the flavor and nutrition as if they were real foods. As explained Yi Zhang, principal investigator of the NTU team:
Our technology helps provide dysphagic patients with appropriate, nutrient-rich and safe diets. Their diet is more dignified, allowing them to socialize and consume foods that look, feel and taste like normal food. Our method of 3D printing fresh vegetables can be easily used in hospitals, nursing homes, daycare centers for the aging population with dysphagia and other swallowing disorders. Our research is also a step further into digital gastronomy, where we can satisfy the specific requirements prescribed by dietitians, such as nutrition personalization and visual appeal.
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The news
This 3D printed food with puree preserves flavor better and looks more visually pleasing
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Consider the final period of a sentence in a book. Or perhaps the final period of this same sentence. Try to expand it. Imagine that you make it giant. That you can peek inside.
In the following image you can see everything that would fit inside.
All the life around us
What is evident in this striking image is that life surrounds us, life is everywhere (whether we see it or not), and it also penetrates us, settles on our skin, helps us live, kills us.
Some even stink.. But bacteria generate repulsive odors not as part of their waste material, but as a means of preventing us from eating their food.
Body bacteria deserve special mention.. For the most part, these species are not pathogens, but rather dentritivores that feed on our bodies as they decompose. In fact, we leave a trail of life everywhere: our skin peels off as we walk around the house in a process called “peeling.”
50 million flakes a day
We all decompose at a rate of approximately 50 million flakes a day. Each flake of skin that swarms through the air contains, in turn, thousands of bacteria that live and feed on it, as explained Rob Dunn in his book Home alone?:
Riding those parachutes of skin, these bacteria fall off us like a constant snowfall. We also release bacteria through bodily fluids (saliva and so on) and in the feces that we deposit here and there. As a consequence, the places at home where we spend time bear marks of our presence. Every place analyzed in any room where we place the body contains microbial signs of the life lived.
In fact, where we spend more time on the body (regardless of the humidity and temperature of the place) it contains a greater number of mites. Matt Colloff, from the University of Glasgow, found in a study that he himself "left" 18 species of mites in total where it landed, especially on the mattress of your bed. Mostly there were dust mites and dust mite predators, living there in his mattress and feeding on his body as he shed.
All of this, in addition to disgust in the strict sense of the word, can also help us debate moral disgust, the arbitrary lines that we establish to consider a life worthy of being protected, ignored or even eliminated. The bioethical conflicts that arise regarding the abortion debate, for example, can be greatly enriched thanks to data like this, and others that you can see in the following video (not suitable for those who are very, very sure that they have the truth):
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The news
All this life is what fits at the end of the period of this sentence.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Reproduction is brutal.
Misbehaving with light.