The food sector accounts for 25–30 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Numerous measures are required to reduce the environmental footprint of food production, including the development of new sustainable foods. At Chalmers University of Technology, researchers are advancing technologies to 3D print hybrid foods – enriching plant-based proteins with aquatic-, dairy- and fermentation-based alternatives to promote nutritional value, taste and consumer acceptance.
Hybrid foods offer the unique ability to gradually bridge the gap between current animal-based diets and future sustainable alternatives, allowing consumers to make incremental shifts toward more environmentally friendly and nutritionally balanced options.
To encourage the wider public to choose vegetarian and sustainable meals, it is crucial that these products have the right texture, are nutritionally balanced – and, of course, taste good. Mehdi Abdollahi, Associate Professor of Food and Nutrition Science at Chalmers, is tackling this challenge using advanced 3D printing technology to develop the foods of the future.
“Plant-based alternatives to meat and seafood generally lack the structure and mouthfeel found in meat products. By embracing the flexibility offered by multi-material 3D printing, our aim is to purposefully combine various alternatives and engineer customized hybrid foods pixel by pixel which could make consumers who are sceptical to vegetarian alternatives more inclined to choose them”, he says.
The generated knowledge would guide the food industry on how to combine different alternatives to complement each other or create synergistic effects.
Mehdi Abdollahi and his team are exploring several approaches to develop sustainable hybrid foods that are also appealing to consumers. His research group also employs methods such as high moisture extrusion, where protein materials are texturised under high pressure, high temperatures, and so-called shear forces to produce a final product with a muscle-like texture.
“High moisture extrusion is industrially used for the development of meat analogues, but our group is trying to adapt the technology for development of hybrid foods which are more appealing,” says Mehdi Abdollahi.
By integrating extrusion with 3D printing in a specially designed machine funded by a grant from the Västra Götaland Region and Formas, the researchers gain unique and enhanced opportunities to create meat-like protein foods. This approach allows them to precisely combine different types of proteins to achieve the desired result.
"3D printing food offers us great flexibility and control over the final product by allowing us to work layer by layer. We can change the base material for each layer, enabling precise control over the structure’s development. Our new custom-made 3D printer allows us to incorporate more components than before, unlocking even greater possibilities," says Mehdi Abdollahi.
Examples of projects using 3D printing to create sustainable foods:
Contact
- Associate Professor, Food and Nutrition Science, Life Sciences