Here's the topic for today - please share your thoughts in a comment!



Since food printers can customize nutrient needs to exactly what you need, I think they can really help people be healthier. The thing is, they don't HAVE to make healthy food; they would be perfectly capable of making unhealthy food too, and it would make it a lot more available than it would be now. However, on balance, I think people in general want to be healthy, and it's my impression that people think eating healthy is too difficult or too bland. I believe food printers can solve both of those problems so they should be a net positive on public nutrition.

You're asking two different questions. If it's possible to make healthier food that tastes just like not-so-healthy food, regardless of the technology being used, does that mean people will eat healthier? Obviously, yes, food printer or no.

But we can't automatically make that assumption. What if food printers can print healthy food, but do not have the magic ability to make it taste good? Then, you're probably not changing too many people's eating habits, except causing them to eat more of what they normally eat because it is now more readily available. And even so-called “healthy” foods can be unhealthy when consumed in excess.

Okay, actually you're asking three questions, because it also matters if there is a cost difference. People sometimes don't eat as healthily as they could because healthy foods are often more expensive. If food printing made healthy foods just as inexpensive as their unhealthy counterparts, then that would lead people to eat healthier foods… but again, that's true regardless of the technology. The main thing the printer does is, in theory, make preparing food at home more convenient. So, maybe you get people to make less fast food runs?

Other than the terminology what's the difference with Star Trek's replicators? Proteins and carbohydrates (and other ingredients) are organized as needed to simulate existing food. It'll be fortified like breakfast cereal so everyone will have all their anti-oxidants and servings of fruits and vegetables. Our friends at International Flavors and Fragrances will make certain it smells and tastes how we expect it to. Ever see the junk food flavors they have in Japan? Kit-kat flavored potato chips or steak and onion flavored tortilla chips? The future is now.

But how are you going to print “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”?

The trick here is that “eating healthy” doesn't really mean what most people think it does.

The most important thing about not getting your body into a fat, unhealthy state is NOT about WHAT you eat but how much. It doesn't really matter whether it's processed, fatty, salty food with lots or red meat or carbohydrates, preservatives and sugar.
How much of anything you eat is the important factor.

Processed food is cheap and designed to make you want to eat more of it. To that end it has lots of sugar, salt and fat that your body craves.

It is not really that bad for you, contrary to popular belief, but it does tend to contain less nutrients (if can contain more if they're added though).
Its primary danger is that it's very cheap, very tasty, and very easy and fast to prepare.

Those are 3 things that printed food would also provide presumably, so if anything food printers would exacerbate eating problems and make us MORE unhealthy.

To make us heat healthy they would have to strictly regulate how much food they give us and NO MORE. They could also adjust for vitamins, fibre, minerals and other nutrients we require but it's generally only for the very old, young or sick that you need to take a lot of care over such micro details- contrary to popular belief XD

Like Oz said, define healthy? If it's about a war on obesity, then portion-controlled low-calorie processed food might fit the bill.

But there are health issues caused by artificial foods that you don't see in diets that are more “from the farm.” One thing that science has not been able to manage when it comes to artificial production is chirality. Natural processes produce products that are all in the same conformation, left-handed or right-handed. “Factory reproductions” create a mixture, and being all other ways equal, they can't be sorted. Wrong chirality will not interact with your body the right way and can cause unpredictable effects. This causes the biggest problem with medicines. That's why many drugs continue to be plant or animal derived. It can be an issue with food too.

Nutritionists and doctors warn, especially older or compromised patients against processed foods, margerine, etc. The preservatives can cause problems. Chirality can cause problems from margarine (always use butter). Artificial sugars cause any variety of issues (depending on the person, and many outright poison pets). I don't know how many of us are old enough to remember the fake fat substitute “olestra.”

So, no, I don't think any kind of food replicator/processor would help anyone eat healthy – by my definition of health. It could help overweight people reduce (especially if it is a programmable machine, like you could put a prescription into) and if it's a cheaply run device, it could help feed the malnourished or sustain people in times of famine. But based on previous scientific advancements in nutrition, I suspect it would bring other health issues along with it.

It's also worth considering, depending on how far into the future we're talking about, to what extent do advances in the medical science negate the necessity for eating “healthy?” If most if not all of the chronic health effects associated with poor diet are no longer a concern, then I doubt too many people would be picky eaters just for the hell of it. To the contrary, I could envision people socially ingesting things that would have killed them in earlier less developed times. Top off an evening dinner with a bowl of hemlock? Why not!

If it's possible to make healthier food that tastes just like not-so-healthy food, regardless of the technology being used, does that mean people will eat healthier?

That's the goal. It's important to remember that food printers are commercial products, so they get made to the specifications that consumers want. I'm pretty sure that the #1 goal is making food as appetizing as possible within the framework of the machine preparing the food for you. Health would be the #3 goal after taste (#1) and convenience (#2), and would be a goal because people do care about that too.

It also matters if there is a cost difference. If food printing made healthy foods just as inexpensive as their unhealthy counterparts, then that would lead people to eat healthier foods.

Like all technologies, they come down in price over time and come down a lot once economy of scale is reached. Food printers currently cost anywhere from several hundred to ac couple thousand dollars, so are definitely NOT really in the mass market yet… but they weren't really available at all prior to several years ago at most, so you could see a trend forming in lowered cost and greater availability.

Other than the terminology what's the difference with Star Trek's replicators? How are you going to print “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”?

A replicator, according to Star Trek, forms objects at the molecular level. It simply assembles them into what you want from source minerals. A food printer physically forms what you want from prepared sources but has to use a “crafting” approach instead of a “materializing” approach. The methods available to craft will, in the short to medium term, involve different nozzle heads for the different materials involved (as they need different crafting processes) and should(?) over time get closer to molecular application that is more generalized. Making things appear out of thin air seems like it wouldn't be a high priority research item, I think.

To make us heat healthy they would have to strictly regulate how much food they give us and NO MORE. They could also adjust for vitamins, fibre, minerals and other nutrients we require but it's generally only for the very old, young or sick that you need to take a lot of care over such micro details - contrary to popular belief.

That depends on where you are and what food you have available. A lot of people in tech-advanced countries, particularly the US, are deficient in general nutrients. The body can usually handle it, but it doesn't mean that it should have to and there could be consequences to that. In other countries where food is not plentiful people can be outright deficient in key nutrients and be sick because of it. Anyway, it is very possible to print a larger portion of insoluble fiber or other “filler” material to round out meals; whether or not good materials for that exist yet isn't something I know. What's important is food printers can make sure you get what you need and not more IF the appropriate ingredients are available.

It's also worth considering, depending on how far into the future we're talking about, to what extent do advances in the medical science negate the necessity for eating “healthy?”

I generally project between the present and 100 years from now, and I do think that 100 years from now we will be past the issue of junk food killing us. Again though, just because we have ways to counteract excessive calories doesn't mean you can eat whatever you want and expect to be ok. In fact, as other health issues vanish and people live much, much longer, it's going to be much easier to see the problems (like nutrient deficiencies) that were invisible beforehand.

sunseeker25 wrote:
That depends on where you are and what food you have available. A lot of people in tech-advanced countries, particularly the US, are deficient in general nutrients. The body can usually handle it, but it doesn't mean that it should have to and there could be consequences to that. In other countries where food is not plentiful people can be outright deficient in key nutrients and be sick because of it. Anyway, it is very possible to print a larger portion of insoluble fiber or other “filler” material to round out meals; whether or not good materials for that exist yet isn't something I know. What's important is food printers can make sure you get what you need and not more IF the appropriate ingredients are available.

That's not actually true. It's quite rare that healthy people (in most countries) are deficient in any nutrients. The food industry and supplement industry makes money out of the deficiency myth.
There usually have to be specific conditions for people to be lacking- Maybe a person has a weird diet of only eating bread for example…
In developed countries unless you're very old, young or sick you have to try very hard to have nutrient deficiencies- Even a person who just eats fast food all day and never touches fruit or vegies well easily avoid something like scurvy because of the citric acid in their pepsi :D

Basically food has all the nutrients we need. But when you're young you need much more of them and when you're old or sick you have trouble digesting enough and can even tend to lose them.

So the food printer could be very good for adjusting to the diets of those people! ^_^

That's not actually true. It's quite rare that healthy people (in most countries) are deficient in any nutrients.

It's rare for someone such to suffer a noticeable problem from that deficiency. The RDA in most countries is the ideal level, not what you need to avoid trouble. For example, potassium is recycled by the body in most cases, which is good because we need a fairly good amount of it. We have adapted to an omnivorous diet which varies a lot, and it helps us to this day.

However the key word there is “noticeable”. We don't yet know what the long term effects of less severe deficiencies are. We will get more chance to do so in the future as other health issues fade away, revealing what is left.

The food industry and supplement industry makes money out of the deficiency myth.

The food industry makes money off selling low-quality processed food, not whole food which is what is promoted as fixing nutrient deficiencies. The supplement industry is largely a scam, I agree with that, and you won't find me supporting most vitamins.

Even a person who just eats fast food all day and never touches fruit or vegies well easily avoid something like scurvy because of the citric acid in their pepsi :D

Scurvy is prevented by ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), not citric acid. Sodas don't typically contain vitamin C.

One advantage of a food printer would be to make food that doesn't look good, look more appetizing. Some people won't eat brussel sprouts or broccoli because of the appearance. So print broccoli as a steak changing taste and appearance but keeping the values and portion size.

Another thing with a food printer is one could have a card containing your diet as determined by your metabolism and living habits. Could be your healthcare card too with all your medical information. You put it in any printer and you can only get a predetermined choice and portion size depending on health and body type and life-style. The diet best for you would be what you get (like some of the best whole health food plans dietitians and nutritionists design for various non-fad, scientifically based diets.)

That's what I came up with for most of my future cultures like the Aordians. They pretty much have to go outside the system to get more exotic food like potato chips. But then Aordian entrepreneurs sell the systems to any culture willing to buy it so it rapidly becomes near universal among human inhabited planets unless you really want to go primitive; like earth. But then they are so accustomed to their personalized diets they turn their noses up at anything else unless it really, really tastes good like a bacon double cheese burger with waffle fries. (But then theoretically, if building food from base components it could look and taste like the bacon double cheese burger but be completely healthy)

And of course you have to have plenty of fiber! Bread is the staff of life and fiber is absolutely necessary for colon/rectal health. Some of us go for colonoscopies as recommended by our gastroenterologists based on the current scientific literature. And I take fiber supplements because I don't eat enough fiber to satisfy my metabolism. Just not enough time or strength of will to eat right; so supplements based on deficiencies found during my regular check-ups.

The system would require preventative medicine that is NOT rationed but routinely available as needed as an educated population weened off of fads and fallacies. (Martin Gardner's great book published in the 1950s still chronicles the silliness of fad diets. They come and go and then come back)

That's what I came up with for most of my future cultures like the Aordians. They pretty much have to go outside the system to get more exotic food like potato chips. But then Aordian entrepreneurs sell the systems to any culture willing to buy it so it rapidly becomes near universal among human inhabited planets unless you really want to go primitive; like earth. But then they are so accustomed to their personalized diets they turn their noses up at anything else unless it really, really tastes good like a bacon double cheese burger with waffle fries. (But then theoretically, if building food from base components it could look and taste like the bacon double cheese burger but be completely healthy)

Very cool. That's an interesting mercantile (cross-culture, based on scarcity) approach.

My own writing more or less posits that by 2118 food printers are the norm and can make food identical to what we have now, and the recipes are designed to be nutritionally balanced as well as tasty. It's so easy that no-one really thinks twice about it. Truth of the matter is, this is likely to happen before 2118, but we'll have to see how it goes.