3D Food Printing: Principles of Obtaining Digitally-Designed Nourishment

Three-dimensional printing (3DP) technology gained significance in the fields of medicine, engineering, the food industry, and molecular gastronomy. 3D food printing (3DFP) has the main objective of tailored food manufacturing, both in terms of sensory properties and nutritional content. Additionally, global challenges like food-waste reduction could be addressed through this technology by improving process parameters and by sustainable use of ingredients, including the incorporation of recovered nutrients from agro-industrial by-products in printed nourishment. The aim of the present review is to highlight the implementation of 3DFP in personalized nutrition, considering the technology applied, the texture and structure of the final product, and the integrated constituents like binding/coloring agents and fortifying ingredients, in order to reach general acceptance of the consumer. Personalized 3DFP refers to special dietary necessities and can be promising to prevent different non-communicable diseases through improved functional food products, containing bioactive compounds like proteins, antioxidants, phytonutrients, and/or probiotics.

Demystifying Emulsifiers as Additives through Molecular Gastronomy: A Contribution to Rise Consumer’s Sovereignty

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, one third of food produced annually for human consumption results in food losses or wastage, which is environmentally degrading, economically unviable, ethically incorrect, and does not contribute to sustainable development. The use of additives can help prevent the waste of food that is still fit for consumption in a world where about 16% of the world’s population goes hungry. Food additives may overcome the problem of limited supply of natural ingredients, increase the shelf life of foods and simplify the complex cooking procedures. To raise the consumer’s knowledge about food additives, this work presents and explain in a simple manner some physical/chemical properties of emulsifiers, namely fatty acids esters and sucrose esters of fatty acids. Moreover, this work reviews and illustrates, recurring to recipes of molecular gastronomy, how these additives are used in food preparation to achieve and maintain certain desirable characteristics, how they contribute to obtain a better result in final preparation, and how they can be used in modern cuisine. Preparations coming from the discipline of molecular gastronomy have been chosen since they are based on laboratory related procedures and only use few ingredients, including an additive.

Molecular gastronomy-an incentive for innovative research of various aspects related to the nutrition process

The growing competition in the market of food manufacturers in recent years makes more and more demands on the quality and consumer appeal of food products. The necessity of continuous improvement of the senso-ry properties of products determines high requirements for the professional knowledge of industrial technol-ogists. Today, there is no doubt that the food industry is experiencing a significant shortage of specialists who have systemic and commercially applicable knowledge of both the organoleptic analysis itself and the mechanisms of molecular transformations and processes that affect the formation of sensory properties of food. The modern scientific discipline "Molecular gastronomy" has significant potential for systematizing knowledge regarding mechanisms of chemical and physical changes that occur in a product during techno-logical processing, and their influence on the formation of organoleptic properties of products. We believe that the inclusion of this discipline in the educational process to study specialists of the directions "Food products of animal origin" and "Food products from vegetable raw materials" is highly-demanded and well-timed. In the fishing industry, the studying of technologists for this discipline can be implemented within the profiles ''Technology of products from aquatic biological resources'' and ''Food biotechnology of aquatic or-ganisms''. This discipline can be included both in the preparation of bachelors within these profiles, and in the educational program for the preparation of masters.