Design and analysis of novel 3D printed foods with re-purposed animal and plant proteins

Abstract

Food Transition 2050 describes the need for New Zealand to diversify its food products. This has led to an increased interest in evaluating new food applications for animal, plant, fungal and microbial proteins. One of the approaches to increase available protein is to reduce food wastage and fully utilize existing animal and plant-based proteins by improving the functional and nutritional value of side streams from the food industry. Often these have either poor texture or visual appeal. 3D food printing technology offers the opportunity to turn these side streams into complex shaped foods with increased functional and nutraceutical value. With the insights on 3D food printing technology and the newly installed in Lincoln University, The current project uses 3D Foodini food printers (manufactured by Natural Machines) to develop the tools and prototype processes that will allow the industry to gain greater value from the NZ resource base by producing new-to-NZ protein ingredients and foods. Our team has successfully established animal protein based (meat or dairy), pea protein based and hybrid (peameat; pea-dairy; pea-dairy-meat) 3D printed foods, and then determined their textural and rheological properties of these 3D printed protein constructs. These attractive 3D printed soft-textured protein-rich products will be particularly useful to people with special dietary requirements like dysphagia and geriatrics.