A Nanotech Based Food Synthesizer

In this short paper we describe a simple machine that can be used to make most any food for which it has a suitable "receipe". This machine makes very nutritious food, that further satisfies the visceral needs of good taste, and enjoyment. Further, it is really quite a simple machine that most likely could be built with quite simple nanotechnology.

Requirements For a Food Synthesizer

• Nutrition Most obviously, the material that the machine makes must provide for the basic nutrition of the user.
• Enjoyable For the food to be palitable, it must satisfy our basic senses: it must taste, smell and feel like real food.
• Convenient Since the food synthesizer must compete with all the various easy to fix food options available, it must be easy to use, and quick.
• Inexpensive The food synthesizer must be cheaper than other food options. Further, if we wish to use it to solve the world's food crisis, it must be very cheap.

A Design For the Synthesizer

above the tubes are approximately twenty layers of horizontal supply tubes. Each supply tube has a t-joint and valve, that allows a computer control system to inject the contents of the supply tube into the vertical pixel generator tube. These twenty layers of supply tube are feed under pressure from a central cynlinder, containing twenty or so different food components.

The top supply tube contains a supply of small indigestable fiber packets, each a cube a little over a micron on each side. These fiber packets are pushed under pressure down the vertical tubes, and emerge out the end, landing on the plate. As it progresses down the vertical tube, the various horizontal supply tubes inject a variety of chemicals into it.

The supply tubes contain chemicals with the following food properties:

• Binding enzyme This is a chemical enzyme that causes the indigestible fiber to harden by cross bonding. This both hardens the individual packets of fiber, and also leaches out the sides to cause bonding between the fiber packets above, below and to the side of the packet.
• Color agents Three layers inject cyan, magenta and yellow food coloring into the packet, to supply color to the food.
• Taste components Taste is a four dimensional sense (bitter, sweet, sour and salt.) Four supply tubes can add an appropriate amount of chemicals with these properties.
• Smell components Smell is approximately a seven dimensional sense (though research needs to be done to tie down the details of our olfactory system.) Seven tubes deliver appropriate volalite chemicals to be injected into the fiberous mass.
• Water Three tubes deliver hot, room temprature and ice cold water, in appropriate amounts to set the temprature of the food, and also to supply enough water to avoid constipation.
• Nutrition Four tubes are used to supply the nutritional components of the food. One tube supplies lipids, one carbohydrates, one amino acids, and one vitamins and minerals. An optimal balance of lipids is injected from the lipid tube, an optimal balance of short and long carbs from the carbohydrate tube, and an optimal balance of different amino acids from the protein tube.
• Utility Layer This layer allows you to lace your food with some other arbitary chemical. Most of the time this would not be used, however it might be useful to give a theraputic drug to an an unwilling child (or adult!) without any of the usual problems.

The binding enzyme is injected in various amounts to determine both the hardness of the mass, and its texture and cleavage planes. The other chemicals set the temprature, color, smell and taste of the food. The four nutrition tubes give complete and total control over the nutritional value of the food.

The system would operate by the user placing a plate in a machine the size of a microwave oven. The array of vertical tubes would be placed over the plate and slowly, layer by layer the food would be built up by injecting suitable blobs of fiberous material, under computer control of the "receipe."

Since each blob is a cube one micron on the side it is too small for the human senses to detect, and thus, the food would look, taste, smell and feel like real food (or anything else you might like to make.)

The food would be built up in one micron layers, and since it could very conservatively produce 1000 blobs per second, we expect it to operate at about 1mm height per second. For a typical steak dinner (with twice baked potatoes) this would take about one minute to lay down.

The same system could be used to make beverages, though an alternative apporach might work better for these substances.

In addition to the supply pipes listed above, there would be one additional pipe connected to the vertical pipes. This would be a cleaning pipe. When cleaning was desired (before each meal was produced), super heated water would be blown through all the pipes. The array has a special machanism that lifts it up into a separate tray,to prevent accidental exposure to the water. Additionally, this same super headed water could be blown through all the supply pipes to clean the whole system.

Advantages Of The Food Synthesizer

• Perfect Nutrition Since the computer completely controls the nutritional content of the food (most of the food being indigestable fiber), it can guarantee a perfect nutritional balance. Each user of the device simply indicates who he is, then the computer maintains a count of the nutrition that person has had for the day, and adjusts the contents appropriately. Further, each individual could have a specific nutritional profile. Weight loss diets would simply consist of a quick adjustment to your nutritional profile spreadsheet! The family teenager could receive extra protein in a growth spurt without any complex adjustments to the family meal. An athlete could up his carbs the night before a race, Dad can have more calories than Mom, and Tabby the cat can have her own nutritional needs supplied.
• The Eat Whatever You Want Diet Imagine, with a system like this you can eat whatever you want, and in any quantity you want, with no consequences to your health! Want to live on pizza and donuts? This system will allow you to do it, and still guarantee a perfect nutritional balance. Want to eat until your belly hurts? Go right ahead. When you have received all your nutritional needs for the day, all you are eating is flavored, colored indigestable fiber. It looks and tastes like your favorite pizza, but it will hardly pause between food bowl and toliet bowl.
• Food Looks, Feels & Tastes Like Regular Food Since the food pixels are so small, the food would be indistinguishable from regular food. Except of course you won't have any gristle in your steak, or any brown bits in your banana (unless you want them, of course.)
• Convenience Not only is this system very quick, it is also largely food independent. That means that Mom can have salad, Dad can have steak, Junior can have Cherrios^® and Spagetti-Os^® and Tabby can have salmon at the same meal. Mother need never insist that Junior "eats his vegetables", since Twinkies^® would have exactly the same nutritional content.
• Simple This device would be very simple to use. Simply choose the meal you want (include vegetables if you like, but remember, adding vegetables doesn't change the nutritional quality of the food), press a button, get out the silverware, and eat. Even a teenage boy could manage that!
• Cruelty Free Since it would require no animals in the processing, this technology could permenently eliminate the farming of animals. Vegans could eat steak, fruitarians could eat carrots. This is especially important because of the vast amounts of farmland required to maintain animals. By some estimates, aminals use 80 to 400 times as much land per pound of food as vegetables and fruits. (Although meat is admittedly more nutritionally dense than vegetables.)
• Extremely Efficient The machine would only use the cylinder of supplies. This cylinder could be purchased from a factory where the contents could be manufactured with very little land, or alternatively, in later versions, a machine could fill the cylinder directly from the air (with the addition of a few mineral salts.) This would greatly reduce the need for massive farms and agribusiness. Famine and grocery shopping could realistically be a thing of the past.
• Inexpensive Because of the previous point it is extremely likely that this system could produce food very inexpensively, costing a little energy, some air, and a handful of mineral salts every week.
• Small And Decentralized Since you could largely make the food in your home, with the exception perhaps of the supplies cylinder, the massive resources committed to food manufacture, storage, wholesale, transport and retail could be directed to other useful activities.
• Relatively Simple Technology The device we describe here does not manufacture food atom by atom. This requires an extrodinarily complex technology, and would probably have to be quite slow because of thermodynamic considerations. Further, if you copy food exactly you will loose all the benefits of nutritional control we have outlined in this system.

Social Impacts Of The Food Synthesizer

Consequently, despite all its many benefits, this technology would be quite hard to introduce. However, in poorer countries, it might be possible to acheive some level of early success where these opposing forces were less effective, and the public desire for clean quality, food is more empassioned.

However, once such a device became more widespread another significant social impact would be the transformation of our landscape. With no need for large farms or ranches agricultural land would be useless for agriculture, and would have to be transferred to other uses. Most likely we would see much of this land return to the wild.

Author: lauras@ziplip.com © 2001
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