Have you ever considered printing your own food?
According the BBC, the same technology being used to make guns, high-class weapons, guitars and toys are being applied to homemade food.
Barcelona-based 3D printing startup, Natural Machines, unveiled the Foodini, which researchers say is a device that combines "technology, food, art and design" and can be used to make "anything from chocolate fingers to ravioli."
According to Natural Machines, Foodini is a prototype 3D printer that allows to cook to create "perfected formed meals." To operate, users combine up to six different ingredients at a time then press a push button. Food comes out of the nozzle in "precisely programmed shapes." The miniature oven shaped product, is useful in other tasks, such as decorating cakes.
Foodini is operated by a touch-screen mini tablet that functions the device. Users can choose anything from print to design.
"We're looking for everyday foods you would eat, so savory foods from ravioli to gnocchi, to decorating toast that you might have for breakfast," Lynette Kucsma, the company's chief marketing officer, told the BBC.
Natural Machines suggested parents can use the device to change up their cooking styles, like designing meals in the shape of their children's favorite animal and cartoon character or surprising their love ones "by customizing a message that could be printed on top of a cake."
Kucsma said Foodini takes on the difficult parts of trying to make a home-cooked meal and is less time consuming.
"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, homemade foods," Kucsma said.
Foodini can only print one material at a time and can only combine ingredients, not cook them.
"Retail food stores have shown an interest," Kucsma said. "They can both print food in-store to sell to consumers as well as sell pre-filled food capsules for consumers to take home to use in their machines."
The Foodini is expected to cost $1,400 when it goes on sale this spring.
