YOUR SAY: Is making fast food faster necessarily better?

All it takes is three minutes to order a fresh, hot pizza and it could be coming to a street near you.

An instant pizza vending machine is being trialed at Westfield Chatswood in Sydney and it is drawing crowds of impressed pizza-lovers.

As remarkable as the instant pizza vending machine is, its not the only way that technology is changing the way we order and access food.

Some of these ways include:

1. Sydney restaurateur George Pompei’s newest import is a $40,000 Italian-made pizza vending machine. The 2m by 1.78m Pizza Gio vending machine cooks and dispenses 11 inch, $12 full-sized pizzas, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The machine can hold 84 pizzas and has taken Mr Pompei more than 18 months to develop.

2. Momentum Machines has built a robot that could replace cooks in fast-food joints. According to the company’s website, the robot can slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles quicker than employers. The company says with their technology, a restaurant can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices, “our alpha machine frees up all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant.”

3. British chef Jamie Oliver trialled new Google glasses, to show a first-person perspective on how he prepares and cooks up his creations. Wearing Google Glass, his audience sees his every move.

4. Live hairy crabs were stocked in vending machines across China and apparently they sold like hotcakes. Using “crab-savvy” innovations, the machine is kept at 5-10 degrees to preserve the crabs in their dormant state. They are kept in cave-like packaging, or Crab Villas.

5. Fast food outlets are also rolling out self-service registers and mobile ordering apps, the Herald Sun reports.  Last year, KFC installed touch-screen kiosks and McDonald’s is also preparing an app to allow people to order and pay by phone. 

Have your say: do you think technology can improve the way we eat, or is slowing down the key to better eating?