Work

Morphing foods: recent progress and future innovations

Year: 2026

Type: review

Abstract: In everyday life, foods often change shape upon heating through processes such as shrinking, swelling, or puffing, but these responses are usually naturally occurring and uncontrolled, reflecting the interplay between structure, moisture transport, and thermal effects. Morphing foods apply these principles intentionally, using designed material heterogeneity and surface geometric modifications to achieve predictable and controllable shape transformations during processing. In this review, we critically examine recent progress in stamping, 4D food printing, surface cutting, and bilayer lamination as fabrication strategies for controlled morphing in real food systems. This work emphasises the underlying mechanism, constraints, and relative industrial readiness of different morphing approaches. Together, these perspectives position morphing foods as an emerging direction in food materials design with implications for functionality, sustainability, and consumer experience.

Source: Current Opinion in Food Science

DOI: 10.1016/j.cofs.2026.101388

Authors: Sushil Koirala, Ruoyao Li, Sangeeta Prakash, Azharul Karim, Bhesh Bhandari

Institutions: The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Materials and Mechanics

Subfield: Mechanical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Zero hunger

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,610