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REVIEW ARTICLE

3D food printing—An innovative way of mass

customization in food fabrication

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Jie Sun 1,2* , Zhuo Peng , Liangkun Yan , Jerry Y. H. Fuh and Geok Soon Hong
1 Industrial Design Department, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123, China
2 National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute, Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou 215123, China
3 Keio-NUS CUTE Center, National University of Singapore, Singapore
4 Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Abstract: About 15%–25% of the aging population suffers from swallowing difficulties, and this creates an in-
creasing market need for mass customization of food. The food industry is investigating mass customization tech-
niques to meet the individual needs of taste, nutrition, and mouthfeel. Three dimensional (3D) food printing is a
potential solution to overcome drawbacks of current food customization techniques, such as lower production ef-
ficiency and high manufacturing cost. This study introduces the first-generation food printer concept designs and
functional prototypes targeted to revolutionize customized food fabrication by 3D printing (3DP). Unlike the ro-
botics-based food manufacturing technologies designed to automate manual processes for mass production, 3D
food printing integrates 3DP and digital gastronomy technique to customize food products. This introduces artistic
capabilities into domestic cooking and extends customization capabilities to the industrial culinary sector. Its ap-
plication in domestic cooking or catering services can not only provide an engineering solution for customized
food design and personalized nutrition control, but also has the potential to reconfigure customized food supply
chains.
In this paper, the selected prototypes are reviewed based on fabrication platforms and printing materials. A de-
tailed discussion on specific 3DP technologies and the associated dispensing/printing process for 3D customized
food fabrication with single and multi-material applications is reported. Lastly, impacts of food printing on custo-
mized food fabrication, personalized nutrition, food supply chain, and food processing technologies are discussed.
Keywords: customized food fabrication, mass customization, 3D printing, platform design, multi-material

*Correspondence to: Jie Sun, Industrial Design Department, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China; Email: jie.sun@xjtlu.edu.cn

Received: May 30, 2015; Accepted: June 21, 2015; Published Online: July 2, 2015
Citation: Sun J, Peng Z, Yan L K, et al. 2015, 3D food printing—An innovative way of mass customization in food fabrication. In-
ternational Journal of Bioprinting, vol.1(1): 27–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJB.2015.01.006.

1. Introduction derly cope with their chewing and swallowing prob-
A meals for seniors, athletes, and expectant mothers by
[2]
lems . TNO has also suggested printing customized
bout 15 to 25 percent of people over the age
of 50 years old suffer from difficulties in
varying nutrient components’ levels, like proteins and
swallowing. Pureed foods can provide the
necessary nutrition to them, but most of these foods fats. An increasing market need for mass customiza-
tion on shapes, colors, flavors, textures, and nutrition
[1]
are unappealing and unappetizing . The Netherlands covers most of the food products, including persona-
Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) lized hamburgers, coffees, ice creams, cakes, and bis-
has proposed printing of pureed food to help the el- cuits.

3D food printing—An innovative way of mass customization in food fabrication. © 2015 Jie Sun, et al. This is an Open Access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),
permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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