3D printers can do food... now

Scrambled eggs on a RepRap? Checkmate NASA.

I guess I haven't weighed in on the whole "3D printed food" thing. I thought I had. The machine that NASA has bankrolled is, to me, hardly a 3D printer. It's a nozzle on a CNC machine, but that's where the similarity ends because this can only really make one thing. It's a food-o-matic, which is pretty cool but has been done before with pizza. Now, I'm all for automating food preparation. In fact I'd be thrilled if I went to Taco Bell and my food was made with minimal human interaction. Sure there will be hundreds of disgruntled underpaid teenagers free to do something creative with their lives, but that's a risk I'm willing to make.

In my mind in order for a food machine to be called a 3D printer you'd need to squeeze soylent (no, not that soylent) through a tube and flavor it as it came out. Mind you I don't know how well it would handle anything more complex than "sweet/sour/salty/bitter/sriracha" and texture would be another problem, but at least you could make, literally, whatever you wanted. But really until we have hydrogen recombination on-the-fly and can order tea, earl gray, hot printed food is probably a bad idea.