美研製3D食物打印機 放入原料輸出美食

Feel like eating a hamburger? Or would you rather have a pizza? No problem, the 3D food printer will create anything you want, literally at the click of a button.

Scientists at Cornell University in New York are developing a commercially viable 3D food printer, which uses raw food 'inks' that are fed into the printer and once you load the recipe and press the button, voila!

An electronic blueprint states exactly what materials go where and are drawn up using traditional engineering computer-aided design (CAD) software.

"FabApps would allow you to tweak your food's taste, texture and other properties. Maybe you really love biscuits, but want them extra flaky. You would change the slider and the recipe and the instructions would adjust accordingly," the Daily Mail quoted Dr Jeffrey Ian Lipton as saying.

So anything that can be loaded into syringes - liquid cheese, chocolate and cake batter - can be printed out! So far, they have had some success creating cookies, cake and 'designer domes' made of turkey meat.

Homaro Cantu, chef at Chicago's Moto, has "printed sushi using an ink jet printer".

"You can imagine a 3D printer making homemade apple pie without the need for farming the apples, fertilising, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, fabricating, cooking, serving and the need for all of the materials in these processes like cars, trucks, pans, coolers, etc.," said Cantu.

"3D printing will do for food what e-mail and instant messaging did for communication."

想吃漢堡包？還是匹薩餅？都沒問題，只須按下按鈕，3D食物打印機就可以做出你想要的任何美味。

紐約康奈爾大學的科學家正研發一款可商用的3D食物打印機，以食物原料作“墨水”，將其放入打印機內。用戶只要輸入食譜，按下按鈕，美味佳餚便大功告成！

科學家擬定的“電子圖紙”詳細說明了食物原料的調配方法，該圖紙是用傳統工程學中的計算機輔助設計（CAD）軟件繪製而成的。

英國《每日郵報》援引傑弗裏•伊恩•利普頓的話說：“使用FabApps食物打印機，你可以調整食品的味道、口感和其它特性。也許你很愛吃餅乾，但又希望它們更薄更脆，你可以拖動控制餅乾厚度的滑塊，調整食譜，打印食物的指令也就隨之更改了。”

因此，任何可以被裝入灌注器的食物都可以被打印出來，比如液體奶酪、巧克力和煎餅等等。到目前爲止，科學家已成功“打印”出了餅乾、蛋糕以及火雞肉製作的“特製肉塔”。

芝加哥Moto餐廳的大廚荷馬洛•坎圖已經“用食物打印機做出了壽司”。

坎圖說：“你可以設想一下，使用3D食物打印機自制蘋果派，而無須種蘋果、施肥、運輸、冷藏、包裝、加工、烹飪、上菜，而且不必使用生產過程中會用到的汽車、卡車、平底鍋、冷藏器等工具。”

“3D食物打印機可以方便地製作食物，就如同電郵和即時通訊工具可以使人們快捷地交流溝通。”

Vocabulary:

load: to bring (a program or data) into main storage from external or auxiliary storage（輸入，寫入數據或程序）

voila: used to express success or satisfaction（那就是，瞧，可不是，引起注意或表示滿意）

tweak: to make a minor adjustment to（輕微調整）

syringe: a plastic or glass tube with a rubber part at the end, used for sucking up liquid and then pushing it out（灌注器）