Save
It may look like science fiction, but Japanese start-up open meals wants to fuse genomics, 3D printing and sushi.
The Sushi Singularity restaurant concept is supposed to open in 2020 and will start by sending biological sample kits to their diners before they dine. They will collect saliva and urine samples and use their analysis to inform bespoke 3D printed sushi specifically for them.
By understanding what imbalances seem apparent in their customers’ diets they can provide customised sushi with the right nutritional values.
Open meals debuted their ‘Sushi Teleportation’ concept at South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas last year where they envisaged customers uploading and downloading biodata to a centralised digital platform that was connected to a robotic 3D printer for sushi – cubes of edible gel.
Whether people will be willing to go to the trouble of providing samples of their saliva, urine and faeces so that they can hand over all their personal biodata all so they can eat a slightly more nutritious cube of edible gel, remains to be seen but it raises the interesting subject of restaurant using biodata to make nutritionally bespoke meals for their diners.
The company writes on its website - “Hyper-personalization will become common for future foods. Based on DNA, urine and intestinal tests, people will each have individual health IDs. This identity is analysed, and nutritional matching is performed to match nourishment needs with biometrics, thus the person is automatically provided with the optical diet.”
Sushi Singularity is certainly novel, and the steampunk/dystopian futuristic nature of this concept could be enough to garner the restaurant a cult following. If this can succeed anywhere, it will be in Tokyo when the city hosts the Olympic Games in 2020.
