Abstract
3D food printing is a novel application of additive manufacturing. In the last decade, 3D printing technology was not cost effective for widespread application and adoption; the landscape has now changed and allowed 3D printing technologies to advance. Despite this, there are currently little to no explication on the affordances 3D printing offers to the production of food. This paper takes an affordance approach to identify the areas where 3D food printing technology can be applied. Based on the technology, I explicate four affordances - namely amalgamation, specificity, precise visual and sensory customisation, and digitisation – 3D printing brings to the human production of food. Building on this, I further explore potential use cases and applications of 3D food printing in healthcare, personalised nutrition, home kitchens, professional kitchen, sustainability, and manufacturing. These applications were also further elaborated through the case studies of entrepreneurial start-ups Redefine Meat and byFlow, highlighting how their affordances act as a way for companies to leverage on and examine if an opportunity is viable and achievable for companies to leverage on and examine if an opportunity is viable and achievable via 3D food printing to create potential products. Overall, this thesis has also identified the implications to be considered for healthcare institutes, researchers, food technologists and for people who prepare food on a regular basis across different sectors. Healthcare institutes should review the addition of 3D food printers into their food preparation processes given its advantages, while researchers should focus on the feasibility of adding new features into 3D food printers to improve the current processes and enhance the applications. Food technologists should aim to discover new materials to be used in 3D printers to create new products that would achieve a better nutritional profile. Lastly, people who prepare food can consider integrating 3D food printing technologies into their 7 daily processes due to its benefits in reducing inefficiencies and unlocking new potentials for food preparation and consumption