Consumer Assessment of 3D-Printed Food Shape, Taste, and Fidelity Using Chocolate and Marzipan Materials

Additive manufacturing enables the production of complex structures with emerging approaches showing great promise in the food industry for design customization. Three-dimensional food printing has benefits for providing personalized health and shape fabrication for consumers. Past studies have demonstrated positive consumer perceptions for 3D food printing, but there is still a need for consumer validation of the technology through consumption and rating of fabricated 3D-printed foods. This article measures consumer response on shape, taste, and fidelity for 3D-printed food designs. Participants (N = 28) were presented with a series of designs differing in shape complexity and ingredients (marzipan and chocolate) and provided ratings using a visual analog scale (100 mm line). The results show that fabricated shapes with higher complexity were preferred by participants with 8.8 ± 0.3 ratings over lower complexity shapes with 5.5 ± 0.4 ratings. Taste preference was primarily dependent on the material selection, with chocolate material preferred by participants with 8.2 ± 0.5 ratings over marzipan material with 6.0 ± 0.5. Results demonstrated that participants preferred 3D-printed shapes that achieved high fidelity in recreating their computer-aided design (CAD) with 7.3 ± 0.3 ratings that were greater than 5.5 ± 0.5 for low-fidelity prints. These findings demonstrate first measurements of 3D food printing from a consumer perspective and provide a foundation for future studies on personalized manufacturing and nutrition.