Personalized nutrition: 3D-printed Nutri-Bites tackle cost, scaling and skepticism

From personalized Nutri-Bites tailored to health goals to the logistical hurdles of scaling production, 3D-printed food offers immense potential but also faces several hurdles. Nutrition Insight speaks to the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to learn about benefits and challenges. 

Bart Fischer, the senior business developer of Innovative Food Processing, reveals that high costs, short shelf life and skepticism about its natural appeal need to be addressed to expand accessibility.

“A Nutri-Bite is a ready-to-eat product, produced specifically for you, based on your personalized nutritional advice. It consists of a dough that is 3D printed into a certain shape, a filling and multiple micronutrients dosed into that shape and a topping of choice.”

“The personalized nutritional advice is based on your parameters — like height, age, gender, weight, or body type — your medical diagnosis (for instance, diabetes or gut health problems, the climate you’re in, such as extreme heat or cold, your nutritional goals and your planned activity. All this data results in personalized nutritional advice.”

Proof of concept

Fischer continues saying that this advice serves as the input for the food production machine, translating it into production “code” that directs the output, which is a Nutri-Bite, a customized ready-to-eat product.

A Nutri-Bite is made from dough that has been 3D printed into a specific shape, with filling, multiple micronutrients and a topping.“For now, a proof of concept — translating personalized nutritional advice into a personalized product — is demonstrated. Consumer acceptance is tested in three field settings — military personnel, patients in a hospital and elite women’s sports. Given the limited scale and early days of the machine development, the costs for each Nutri-Bite are quite high and not comparable with regular food products. On the other hand, they are personalized to the max,” says Fischer. 

“More research steps will be required to make Nutri-Bites affordable for everyone. You could think of performing efficacy tests, extending the number of doughs and fillings, perhaps testing more shapes or different shapes of the product and scaling up the production.”

TNO uses regular food ingredients, such as whole grain and carrot for the doughs next to ganache, peanut butter and apple for the fillings. 

Fischer says: “To produce the doughs, we mix ingredients and water, 3D print the dough into a certain shape that can be filled, and bake the dough in an oven. There are no special production steps — it’s like making apple pie. In addition, we focus our communication on the personalization and taste aspect since people are not interested in how something is produced as long as it is tasty and unique for them.”

Upscaling challenges and safety

According to Fischer, challenges may arise when making 3D food printing available to more people with different dietary needs.

“Production should be upscaled to serve more people. We currently only have a small-scale production facility serving as a first prototype to show proof of principle. In addition, the ideal production (central versus decentral) and outlet (shop, hospital, sporting facility, etc.) should be figured out. Our current product has a limited shelf life and should be consumed a couple of hours after production, which causes logistical challenges.”

Fischer adds that the printing production aligns with the EU food production regulation.

“HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) protocols are in place. Dosing of macro- and micronutrients is very precise, for micronutrients even at the microgram level. The machine is calibrated and operated by a validated software program, resulting in the ability to claim that the scientific-based personalized food advice is exactly being translated to a personalized food item addressing your needs.”

Fischer shares that TNO’s research team is analyzing the results of a Nutri-Bites test on soldiers and hospital patients. They are also preparing scientific papers, which will provide more details about the outcomes.