美研制3D食物打印机 放入原料输出美食

Feel like eating a hamburger? Or would you rather have a pizza? No problem, the 3D food printer will create anything you want, literally at the click of a button.

Scientists at Cornell University in New York are developing a commercially viable 3D food printer, which uses raw food 'inks' that are fed into the printer and once you load the recipe and press the button, voila!

An electronic blueprint states exactly what materials go where and are drawn up using traditional engineering computer-aided design (CAD) software.

"FabApps would allow you to tweak your food's taste, texture and other properties. Maybe you really love biscuits, but want them extra flaky. You would change the slider and the recipe and the instructions would adjust accordingly," the Daily Mail quoted Dr Jeffrey Ian Lipton as saying.

So anything that can be loaded into syringes - liquid cheese, chocolate and cake batter - can be printed out! So far, they have had some success creating cookies, cake and 'designer domes' made of turkey meat.

Homaro Cantu, chef at Chicago's Moto, has "printed sushi using an ink jet printer".

"You can imagine a 3D printer making homemade apple pie without the need for farming the apples, fertilising, transporting, refrigerating, packaging, fabricating, cooking, serving and the need for all of the materials in these processes like cars, trucks, pans, coolers, etc.," said Cantu.

"3D printing will do for food what e-mail and instant messaging did for communication."

想吃汉堡包？还是匹萨饼？都没问题，只须按下按钮，3D食物打印机就可以做出你想要的任何美味。

纽约康奈尔大学的科学家正研发一款可商用的3D食物打印机，以食物原料作“墨水”，将其放入打印机内。用户只要输入食谱，按下按钮，美味佳肴便大功告成！

科学家拟定的“电子图纸”详细说明了食物原料的调配方法，该图纸是用传统工程学中的计算机辅助设计（CAD）软件绘制而成的。

英国《每日邮报》援引杰弗里．伊恩．利普顿的话说：“使用FabApps食物打印机，你可以调整食品的味道、口感和其它特性。也许你很爱吃饼干，但又希望它们更薄更脆，你可以拖动控制饼干厚度的滑块，调整食谱，打印食物的指令也就随之更改了。”

因此，任何可以被装入灌注器的食物都可以被打印出来，比如液体奶酪、巧克力和煎饼等等。到目前为止，科学家已成功“打印”出了饼干、蛋糕以及火鸡肉制作的“特制肉塔”。

芝加哥Moto餐厅的大厨荷马洛．坎图已经“用食物打印机做出了寿司”。

坎图说：“你可以设想一下，使用3D食物打印机自制苹果派，而无须种苹果、施肥、运输、冷藏、包装、加工、烹饪、上菜，而且不必使用生产过程中会用到的汽车、卡车、平底锅、冷藏器等工具。”

“3D食物打印机可以方便地制作食物，就如同电邮和即时通讯工具可以使人们快捷地交流沟通。”

Vocabulary:

load: to bring (a program or data) into main storage from external or auxiliary storage（输入，写入数据或程序）

voila: used to express success or satisfaction（那就是，瞧，可不是，引起注意或表示满意）

tweak: to make a minor adjustment to（轻微调整）

syringe: a plastic or glass tube with a rubber part at the end, used for sucking up liquid and then pushing it out（灌注器）