3D Food Printed Dishes For Our Aging Population

It is the dietitians’ challenge to feed this silver generation in dignity as they age in sickness and in health.  WHO and respective countries have various strategies and action plans on how to tackle this aging issue, such as fall prevention, nursing home care, and nutritional assessments to identify the malnourished. Dietitians and food industries are also finding ways to feed a subset of this population that has chewing / swallowing difficulties.  Such puree foods of graduated consistencies are often inconsistently produced, unpalatable and visually unappealing, yet requiring intensive manpower. 

This pose the challenges on how to mass-produce consistently consistent textured puree dishes for people with chewing / swallowing difficulties.  Exploiting technologies and artificial intelligence, 3D food printing can be a disruptive food innovation of commercial viability, to create such puree dishes.  The 3D printed dishes can potentially be personalized through the computation of the recipe ingredients. This will reduce molds, manpower, money, and monitoring of the food production chain.  It can be digitized to guarantee consistent mass production of a visually appealing type of 3D formed local dishes that our elderly population will be willing to eat and thus enjoy safely, reducing risks of malnutrition and choking.  

Other challenges will include coordinating a network of stakeholders such as the dietitians, food technologists, chefs, food safety officers, caterers, 3D food printer manufacturers, food ink suppliers, software programmers, packaging and storage specialists, thermal engineers, delivery truck drivers, etc.

This talk will present the global challenges that dietitians in clinical practice/food services/community may face when managing the patient with dysphagia, from assessment to production to the mouth; an overview of the status of 3D Food printing overseas and in Asia; and how 3D Food printing may be the food service of the future for the aging population and beyond.