A device for cutting food generally comprises a cutting unit having at least one rotatable carrier supporting one or more knives attached thereto, a feeding tube arranged above the cutting unit for supplying food to be cut to the cutting unit, and a bowl arranged underneath the cutting unit for receiving the cut food from the cutting unit. Examples of such a device are known from EP 2 628 424 A1 and US 2010/0154660 A1. Examples of food to be cut include many types of vegetables and fruits, which may be relatively hard like onions or relatively soft like tomatoes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,180 relates to a threading and dicing machine which comprises a cutting unit arranged in a housing. The cutting unit has a control disk mounted to a motor-driven shaft and a cutting blade mounted on the shaft above the control disk to slice food pieces. Furthermore, a set of thin vertical cutting blades can be mounted to the shaft through the control disk to produce shredded pieces of the food pieces. The control disk can be raised and lowered, and spacings between the thin vertical blades can be narrowed or widened, so that sizes of the slices or shreds can be increased and decreased.
A disadvantage of the machine known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,180 is that a flow of food pieces cannot be accurately controlled. Food which is supplied to the cutting unit descends under the influence of gravity and is supposed to encounter the vertical cutting blades and the cutting blade positioned above the control disk, but there is room for deviation from the route as desired. Furthermore, the food pieces are supposed to be driven towards a discharge opening providing access to a bowl or the like under the influence of rapid rotation of the control disk, for example, at 1200 rpm. Hence, the discharge of the food pieces is also not very well controlled, wherein there is a considerable risk that food pieces stay behind in the housing in which the cutting unit is present, and wherein it may happen that the food pieces are subjected to cutting processes during a prolonged period, resulting in a mushy mass of the food instead of well-cut dices. All in all, the known machine is not very effective in cutting food, while it is necessary to drive the cutting unit at a rather high speed and apply rather high forces for rotating all elements of the cutting unit, on the basis of which it is only possible to have a motor-driven version of the machine.