In a perfect world, people would have easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables at affordable prices. They would not live in food deserts, and 30% to 40% of food produced in the U.S. would not be lost annually through overproduction, surplus and waste.

In the absence of perfection, improvements to the production, distribution, duration and nutrition of food are critical. Toward that end, Ali Ubeyitogullari, an assistant professor of food engineering with the Food Science and Biological and Agricultural Engineering departments at the University of Arkansas, has dedicated himself to pushing food science into a novel new direction: 3-D printing.

 "We work at the intersection of food engineering and human health to improve people's diets," he explains.

Ali Ubeyitogullari

The native of Turkey grew up around the family's olive orchards in Antioch but had no particular interest in food, whether as a farmer or a chef.

 "Honestly," he jokes, "my parents were telling me they needed someone to pick the olives. I was like, 'Sorry, I cannot help!'"

But when he attended the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, he discovered you could major in food engineering, a department largely unknown in the U.S. He thought it sounded "super fun." Now five years into his joint appointment with the U of A System Division of Agriculture and the U of A, he is an energetic and engaging advocate for the future of food through 3-D printing.

At first blush, 3-D printed food might sound monstrous, ultra-processed food production brought to its nightmarish endpoint: industrialized glop dribbled out by robots like so many plastic parts. But Ubeyitogullari thinks that's a misunderstanding. Instead, he foresees a future where 3-D printing food is more efficient, in terms of reducing waste, production time and energy usage; more flexible; and even more nutritious, which is a major focus of his research: food as medicine.

William Gibson famously said, "The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed."

If you want a foretaste of it, you can find it in Ubeytitoguallari's lab.

The Case for Printing Food

First it should be said the science of 3-D printing food is not nearly as advanced as it is in manufacturing, so much of what Ubeyitogullari is anticipating may be a decade or more away. That said, Ubeyitogullari is already 3-D printing cookie doughs and flours in his lab, so while it may take some time to scale up, speed up and identify the best formulations for printable foods, there is little doubt the technology will continue to mature as it has in manufacturing.

Second, he stresses that the feedstock will be the same in 3-D printing as in traditional processing (basically, the difference is between building a product layer by layer versus extruding it through a mold). Say you have an imperfect carrot - it forks at one end or is too long to sell in a bundle or it just looks funny, like Treebeard from Lord of the Rings. Most shoppers avoid buying imperfect produce. There may be other products that can claim these misfit veggies, such as soups, purees or dog foods, but there may not be.

A 3-D printed chocolate Razorback. The plastic tubes contain confections like chocolate and marzipan that are loaded into the steel cylinder, installed in the 3-D printer and heated until they can flow.

Enter 3-D printing. Imperfect carrots can be freeze dried, pulped in a slurry or dehydrated - any process that can help convert them into "bioink" and squirted through a nozzle, usually in combination with a liquid to aid flow.

Here the benefits of printing become clearer. Ubeyitogullari notes that many children don't like to eat their vegetables but can be coaxed into it when they're presented in fun shapes. With 3-D printing, software can easily configure bioink into entertaining forms. He has experimented with turning broccoli and carrot bioink into snacks shaped like SpongeBob SquarePants or chocolate ink into a Razorback. This could be a way to reduce food waste.

Ubeyitogullari also thinks the flexibility of 3-D printing could help mitigate the effects of something like dysphagia, a medical condition in which swallowing becomes difficult that affects an estimated 300,000-700,000 Americans annually. The condition is more common among the elderly, who are restricted to soft foods.

"You really lose your sense of food," Ubeyitogullari comments, "like you don't really understand from the puree what you are eating." 3-D printing could return food to its original look and shape, but a softer consistency to facilitate swallowing. Restoring the sensuous nature of food could also help reduce weight loss.

3-D printing would also eliminate the need to reconfigure production lines because the only changes from one product to another would be software updates and swapping out bioink cartridges. Ubeyitogullari also thinks it would be relatively easy to port 3-D printing assemblies to environmental disaster sites, humanitarian aid stations or even aboard space stations to provide meals in the tradition of MREs. The difference is that 3-D printed food need not be one size fits all. It could be customized to address specific dietary needs, whether that of an individual soldier doing heavy labor, an astronaut fending off muscular atrophy or a displaced person suffering malnutrition.

Encapsulating sorghum flour with bioactive compounds.

Ultimately, though, Ubeyitogullari thinks that ability to customize food to make it more nutritious will be the driving force behind 3-D printing rather than the ability to reduce waste or cut costs through production efficiencies.

As such, enhancing nutrition is the primary thrust of his research.

Writing In Edible Ink

One avenue of Ubeyitogullari's research is to improve the bioavailability of bioactive compounds in food. Bioactive compounds are naturally occurring chemicals found in fruits, nuts, seeds and vegetables that play a role in reducing the risk of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders, as well as contributing to overall health and wellness. Probiotics, like those found in yogurt cultures, are microorganisms that promote gut health. An increasing body of research indicates that gut microbiota play a critical role in the gut-brain axis, helping to regulate mood, mental health and immune response.

The problem with bioactive compounds is their bioavailability and chemical stability, which can lead to a relatively short shelf life and low absorption in the body.

"Their bioavailability is very low, so that when you consume them, you don't really get the full benefit of them," Ubeyitogullari explains. He estimates that due to a low absorption rate in the gut and a short shelf life, we only absorb around 1% of the bioactive compounds we consume.

When it comes to probiotics, the problem is they often don't get past the stomach to the colon where they are needed (and occasionally nuked by antibiotics). As such, Ubeyitogullari's lab is looking at infusing probiotic microbes in an alginate pectin media to protect them from stomach acids. A previous article on this research noted that "Alginate is a seaweed extract and pectin is the gel in jellies. The alginate-pectin material is resistant to low pH (highly acidic) levels in stomach acids but will open in the less acidic levels found in the colon."

This process of infusing bioactive compounds into a heartier food matrix is called encapsulation.

Ali Ubeyitogullari using a 3-D printer to encapsulate sorghum flour.

Ubeyitogullari explains the process this way: "We use different food grade biopolymers — basically food ingredients commonly used every day in the kitchen. Mostly we're interested in things that form hydrogels or gels because we want a porous structure. Starch, when you just mix it with water and heat it up, forms a gel. It forms very nice porous structures so that you can load them with bioactive compounds, and at the same time, when you do that encapsulation, you reduce the size of the compound, but also you physically protect it from the environment. You can combine that with 3D printing to be able to precisely control where those bioactive compounds are going in the food matrix. So, for example, if you get that bioactive compound, and you have your starch, and you just randomly mix it, what happens? You don't have control over the bio compounds at the surface of the starch or how much goes into it. So with 3-D printing, you really can adjust and precisely locate where those compounds are going in a food matrix."

Sorghum flour is another ingredient Ubeytiogullari is sifting through. Sorghum is an attractive ingredient in new food products because it's gluten free, high in both fiber and protein (for a plant), digests slowly and is drought tolerant. It's used as a meat substitute and an ingredient in protein bars. It also has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties due to bioactive compounds, making it an attractive bioink. Ubeyitogullari is working with Sorour Barekat, a postdoctoral fellow in the Food Science Department, to develop a novel 3-D printable gel from sorghum protein.

In still another research project, Ubeyitogullari, Barekat and Safoura Ahmadzadeh, another postdoctoral researcher, are experimenting with increasing the bioavailability of lutein, associated with eye health, and anthocyanins, which are associated with improved visual and neurological health, in starch/zein gels for the first time. Corn starch was selected for the outer layer because of its excellent extrudability and shape retention, while zein, a hydrophobic material made from maize, was used in the core layer.

A sorghum plant.

Experiments with nozzle speeds, percentages of starch and other ingredients are ongoing.    

Welcome to the Machine

Again, Ubeyitogullari doesn't think any of this should replace fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grains. But if your cucumber goes rotten or you can't make it to the store after work, if you wince at the price of organic produce or recoil at the taste of broccoli, why not have healthier alternatives? Why not try to make the processed foods we do eat healthier and less wasteful?

Still, he concedes, it may be an uphill battle when it comes to changing public perception.

"It is a very valid discussion from a consumer perception standpoint," he says, "but there have been similar examples in the past, and I think with maybe more knowledge and examples we will overcome that. The same thing happened with the microwave. People thought the microwave was making Frankenstein food, radioactive, this and that. But now every home has a microwave. I think people will see that a 3-D printer is just another kitchen tool to process food."

He even anticipates a day where you could use your smart phone to order up a meal at the house, add some nutritional supplements or medications, and find it waiting for you when you get home from work.

Recoil or rejoice at the notion, the future of food is already here.

Que Anh Truong Le, Sorour Barekat, and Ali Ubeyitogullari.