Is 3D-printed food for real? Voodoo Manufacturing cofounder explains

Wanna come over for dinner? I just found some great new recipe files online, I’ll print us up something great.
No one has said this yet, and potentially no one will, but it’s not entirely implausible.
Michael Schwartz, cofounder of Bushwick 3D printing outfit Voodoo Manufacturing, lays out his view of the landscape in a piece in VentureBeat.

In essence, food 3D printing is this: you take a standard 3D printer, replace the non-edible material (like plastic filament) with something edible, and voilà, you have a food 3D printer! In reality though, the results have been less than amazing. What you typically get with a food 3D printer is a purée of perfectly good food extruded in an odd-looking shape. Still, there are a few companies trying to pave the way to real businesses in this space.

One of the products he mentions is PancakeBot. PancakeBot releases pancake mix onto a hot griddle, and will execute designs you can create beforehand. It’s not clear that PancakeBot improves the cost or difficulty of making pancakes, in fact it probably increases both, but it does help you make cool designs.
Ultimately, Schwartz decides 3D printing food still doesn’t quite makes sense.
“The number one factor that determines a technology’s success is the degree to which it creates value for the end user or application. The value of food 3D printing is not yet apparent.”

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