26 June ’23


in the summer of 2003, when I was 3 years old, my teacher at school asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up

without doubt I wanted to be a spy & a cook - so I drew it

in the summer of 2021, when I was 21 years old, I jointed a robotics research lab in my university to help build a ’food 3D printer’

as chance would have it, that summer my mum unexpectedly found that drawing and so she shared it with me

she joked that building a food 3D printer, essentially a ’digital cook’, was as close I’d been to following my 3-year-old self’s dream

although it was meant as a joke, my drawing got me deeply thinking about what I wanted to do now that I was ’grown up’

I had been enjoying my work that summer more than any other project before and, when I thought about it, I recognised it was because it involved food

food combines science and art, it is a need but often can feel like a luxury, and it is arguably as fundamental to culture as culture is to food

food also represents home - growing up in Spain, I learnt that a lightly salted ripe tomato has the same value as a steak and, although food is important, the people you share it with is way more so

to me this was a huge lesson that often times we are very wise at 3 years old

that summer I decided that I was going to use my skills in design & engineering to help solve the (what I soon realised were many) problems with the food industry

I replied to my mum saying that I was going to follow my dreams from 2003 by working with food - & I joked that I might have been a spy all along but that she’d never know ;)

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