FoodFab Uses 3D Printers to Help Curb Your Appetite
MIT researchers have developed a system that modifies a person's perceived satiety given a defined amount of calorie intake.
How do you stop overeating? A team of MIT researchers thinks it has to do with chewing times and 3D printers.
Their FoodFab system creates small portions of food to help control food intake. It produces food with different structures and patterns to increase chewing time, which has been linked to influencing people’s perception of how full they are. Recent research shows changing cues, like how big a plate is, lighting, and increased biting force, can help people modify their perception of satiety.
The team conducted two experiments to test this theory. To study the effect of food infill parameters, they recorded the chewing time of 30 people recorded using an electromyograph (EMG) sensor. After this, participants filled out a questionnaire to see how their perception of satiety had changed. They used this data to help build the FoodFab system.
So how exactly does it work? The food you want to eat and how hungry you are entered on the system’s interface. It can also read your daily calorie intake from a fitness tracker. It will then split the appropriate number of calories over a set of daily meals. It selects meal types and calorie packages based on the time of day. It then figures out how much of the ingredient, like cookie dough, can be used to stay within the allowable calories.
From there, it scales the 3D model of the food to a size that fits the pre-determined amount of the ingredient. Based on your hunger level and correlated chewing time, it selects an infill pattern and creates a portion of food with a chewing time that provides the desired satiety.
While the team believes the system could help people modify their food intake, the system needs more work and research before it’s ready for the consumer market. They want to increase the types of ingredients that can be used with it. Right now, it’s limited to four: avocado, cookie dough, pork puree, and ganache. They will also explore how to include different parameters, like a number of shells and layers into the system. In the future, they envision FoodFab being used in restaurants to help chefs create meals for large groups and by consumers.