Printability Prediction of Three Gels for 3D Food Printing

Abstract

A 3D food-printing technique has great potential for food customization. It offers a great variety of shapes, dimensions, etc. To obtain new suitable printing formulations, it is important to carry out printability studies. These studies seek to know the shape stability of formulations that are related to rheological and textural properties. Some authors are correlating printability with rheological and physico-chemical parameters. The objective of this study was to characterize the textural and rheological properties by means of extrusion and oscillatory tests, respectively, of three gels of different formulations for predicting their printability. The gels are composed of porcine gelatin plus iota-carrageenan (Gp + I), bovine gelatin with kappa-carrageenan (Gb + K) and methylcellulose (MC). t. The results showed that Gp + I and Gb + K need higher values of maximum force in an extrusion test than MC, but MC had less deviation in force value during the extrusion test. The three samples showed a predominantly elastic behavior and damping factor (tan δ) between 0.14 (Gb + K) and 0.37 (MC). It was estimated that the maximum height of the samples should be 0.8 cm, 1 cm and 0.008 cm for Gp + I, Gb + K and MC, respectively, to exhibit 5% deformation after 1 h for a 3 cm diameter printed cylinder.

Keywords

• 3D food printing
• printability
• rheological properties
• extrusion analysis