Military Rations may be Printed.

[frigidmagi]

Army.mil

Army researchers are investigating ways to incorporate 3-D printing technology into producing food for Soldiers.

The U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center's, or NSRDEC's, Lauren Oleksyk is a food technologist investigating 3-D applications for food processing and product development. She leads a research team within the Combat Feeding Directorate, referred to as CFD.

"The mission of CFD's Food Processing, Engineering and Technology team is to advance novel food technologies," Oleksyk said. "The technologies may or may not originate at NSRDEC, but we will advance them as needed to make them suitable for military field feeding needs. We will do what we can to make them suitable for both military and commercial applications."

On a recent visit to the nearby the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, NSRDEC food technologist Mary Scerra met with experts to discuss the feasibility and applications of using 3-D printing to produce innovative military rations.

"It could reduce costs because it could eventually be used to print food on demand," Scerra said. "For example, you would like a sandwich, where I would like ravioli. You would print what you want and eliminate wasted food."

"Printing of food is definitely a burgeoning science," Oleksyk said. "It's currently being done with limited application. People are 3-D printing food. In the confectionery industry, they are printing candies and chocolates. Some companies are actually considering 3-D printing meat or meat alternatives based on plant products that contain the protein found in meat."

A printer is connected to software that allows a design to be built in layers. To print a candy bar, there are cartridges filled with ingredients that will be deposited layer upon layer. The printer switches the cartridges as needed as the layers build.

"This is being done already," Oleksyk said. "This is happening now."

"It is revolutionary to bring 3-D printing into the food engineering arena," Oleksyk said. "To see in just a couple of years how quickly it is advancing, I think it is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger in terms of its application potential."

Oleksyk believes her team is the first to investigate how 3-D printing of food could be used to meet Soldiers' needs. The technology could be applied to the battlefield for meals on demand, or for food manufacturing, where food could be 3-D printed and perhaps processed further to become shelf stable. Then, these foods could be included in rations.

"We have a three-year shelf-life requirement for the MRE [Meal Ready-to-Eat]," Oleksyk said. "We're interested in maybe printing food that is tailored to a Soldier's nutritional needs and then applying another novel process to render it shelf stable, if needed."

Oleksyk said they are looking at ultrasonic agglomeration, which produces compact, small snack-type items. Combining 3-D printing with this process could yield a nutrient-dense, shelf-stable product.

"Another potential application may be 3-D printing a pizza, baking it, packaging it and putting it in a ration," she said.

Currently, most 3-D printed foods consist of a paste that comes out of a printer and is formed into predetermined shapes. The shapes are eaten as is or cooked.

Army food technologists hope to further develop 3-D printing technologies to create nutrient-rich foods that can be consumed in a warfighter-specific environment, on or near the battlefield.

Nutritional requirements could be sent to a 3-D food printer so meals can be printed with the proper amount of vitamins and minerals, thus meeting the individual dietary needs of the Warfighter.

"If you are lacking in a nutrient, you could add that nutrient. If you were lacking protein, you could add meat to a pizza," Oleksyk said.

Scerra said individual needs could be addressed based on the operational environment.

"Say you were on a difficult mission and you expended different nutrients...a printer could print according to what your needs were at that time," Scerra said.

In the future, making something from scratch may have a completely different meaning.

"We are thinking as troops move forward, we could provide a process or a compact printer that would allow Soldiers to print food on demand using ingredients that are provided to them, or even that they could forage for," Oleksyk said. "This is looking far into the future."

Oleksyk, who was skeptical when she first heard that 3-D printers could be used to engineer food, now marvels at the possibilities.

"I've been here long enough to see some of these 'no ways' become a reality. Anything is possible," Oleksyk said.

Huh... This may mean the death of Country Captain Chicken. Something that will make Hotfoot very happy at least.

[rhoenix]

And the birth of Printed Country Chicken?

...Is it too early to bring back the "shit on a shingle" jokes?

In all seriousness, it's great to see 3D printing come into its own during this time, proving to be an effective technique even for food. However, that doesn't mean I can't poke fun.

[Hotfoot]

FUCK Country Captain Chicken. There are days I have to remind myself that my entire body has replaced itself and there's no way the stink is still actually on me.

As far as Printed meals, this at least is more actual "Printing" than previous setups. It looks like they're going to the Soylent methodology of actually just creating nutrient paste/bars with the proper caloric and nutritional values.

Which means more things to bitch about for your average grunt on the ground, because that shit is likely to taste like congealed ass and make your bowels do something funky, either while eating it or after transitioning back to "normal" food.

I'll admit, a part of me wants to try that whole Soylent thing, if for no other reason than the raw elegance of the solution, but I get the feeling I'd miss Pizza pretty goddamn quick.

[frigidmagi]

Given how much they're drumming about the health benefits I'm willing to bet they haven't cracked the taste problem yet.

That said, that won't stop the Pentagon form adopting this solution, as the Pentagon doesn't care how combat rations taste. It's not like anyone in the Pentagon will have to eat them after all.

[LadyTevar]

Yeah, closer and closer to "Replication" ala StarTrek.

[rhoenix]

Yeah, closer and closer to "Replication" ala StarTrek.

Well, the really funny part to me is that when all of us saw replicators, none of us had even the faintest idea for how something like that might be done, let alone practically.

Now? 3D printing of food, obviously.

I love how knowledge changes our view of what is possible, and how it might be done.

[frigidmagi]

I'm not really seeing it honestly. 3D printers are awesome and everything but Replicators were outright fucking magic. As in I press a button and it makes a mug, spoon and tea. Out of nothing.

[rhoenix]

I'm not really seeing it honestly. 3D printers are awesome and everything but Replicators were outright fucking magic. As in I press a button and it makes a mug, spoon and tea. Out of nothing.

The answer, my good sir, is obviously magic nanomachines.

[Lys]

That said, that won't stop the Pentagon form adopting this solution, as the Pentagon doesn't care how combat rations taste. It's not like anyone in the Pentagon will have to eat them after all.

The infamous D-ration had poor taste as an actual requirement. It was meant to be a high caloric density ration saved for emergencies, and because it was chocolate the brass was worried that if it tasted too good the soldiers might eat it out of turn. The end result was so inedible that officers had to directly order the soldiers to eat it and threaten disciplinary consequences to those who wouldn't, as otherwise many would have preferred to go hungry.

[Josh]

IIRC replicators were actually based on using transporter technology to convert base material into whatever you wanted. Since ST already had magic deconstruction/reconstruction machines manipulating the base qualities of materials by reconfiguring the atoms isn't a big stretch.

Still magic, though.

3D printers won't ever be like that, but they are an awesome sign of things to come regardless.

(And just a bit scary in the biowarfare department.)

[Lys]

That's correct, replicators use neither 3D printers nor nanomachines, but are instead based on the principles behind transporter technology. This is presumably some manner of very precise field manipulation together with matter-energy conversion, but for all intents and purposes might as well be space magic. The important part is that if you can read the "pattern" of an object and transmit it to be recreated at another location, then you can also store a library of patterns to be recreated at leisure. Presumably to save on storage space and energy usage the fidelity of the patterns used by replicators is rather less than that used by transporters, which is why hand made foodstuffs are considered better. It's like the difference between Standard Definition and High Definition, sure the first is serviceable but the latter is preferred.