Towards Inclusive Gastronomy: How 3D Printing Could Enable Allergen Free Dining

Over 230M people worldwide suffer from food allergies, a potentially life-threatening medical condition. While restaurants have to provide allergen information, much can go wrong in the preparation chain, leading to anxiety amongst allergic persons when eating out. 3D printers can offer a controlled and se-cure environment for restaurant kitchens to recreate dishes predefined by chefs for food-allergic guests. We designed a prototype of a transparent and allergen-safe table-top 3D printer, and evaluated the viability of our prototype by reproducing praline, which cannot be tasted by people with a tree nut allergy. A taste test of the praline with non-allergic people and a focus group discussion with people suffering from peanut and tree nut allergies were conducted, which resulted in positive attitudes towards printing for food allergies. We discuss how chefs could recreate parts of their dish with 3D printing, and transparency in preparation to reduce the anxiety of food-allergic guests.