Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly important role in the development of new food products, with its applications ranging from optimizing recipes, to improving food production processes and enhancing nutritional profiles.

Overall adoption of AI in business has doubled since 2017, according to a McKinsey Global Survey on AI, with 50-60% of organizations reporting using it over the past few years.

Several dairy companies are actively using AI to develop new products, improve existing ones and optimize their production processes. The integration of AI in the dairy industry is helping companies innovate in areas such as flavor development, sustainability, personalized nutrition and quality control.

Analyzing trends

AI may be used to monitor and analyze social media, online reviews and consumer feedback, thereby predicting food trends and gauging consumer sentiment. By analyzing consumer reactions, companies can identify emerging tastes, dietary preferences or food fads, and respond quickly with new products that align with these trends.

Mining billions of consumer preference data points helps food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers take trendspotting to a new level.

Platforms such as Tastewise, New York, use AI to analyze consumer data and predict emerging food trends, helping food brands and restaurants innovate according to market demand. Tastewise’s TasteGPT, for example, can create surveys by scouring the internet for consumer data, providing companies with insights into whether a new product will be successful.

“[We’re] capable of doing things that we couldn’t do three years ago, we couldn’t do five years ago, because technology has moved on,” Tom Hadwen, global away from home directory, Kraft Heinz, told the Tastewise summit in London. “We can understand now what’s happening market by market. And that’s something that we started to do. We started to understand the trends [much] earlier so we can own what’s happening in the market.”

In 2022, The Kraft Heinz Co., Chicago, and food tech startup TheNotCompany, Inc. (NotCo), New York, announced a joint venture designed to reimagine global food production and advance toward a more sustainable future.

The joint venture leverages NotCo’s patented, first-of-its-kind technology and proven AI solutions, with Kraft Heinz offering its iconic brand portfolio and scale, to develop superior plant-based versions of co-branded products at a level of speed, taste, quality and scale yet to be seen in the industry.

Image: Business Wire

Utilizing its AI technology and an agile approach to innovation, NotCo made significant progress in addressing these consumer needs, developing plant-based replacements for animal products with simpler ingredients that don’t sacrifice taste, functionality or consumption experience.

Kraft Heinz said the joint venture with NotCo was a critical step in the transformation of its product portfolio, helping it deliver on the company’s vision to offer more clean and green products for consumers.

The collaboration led to the development of plant-based dairy alternatives Kraft NotCheese Slices and NotMac&Cheese.

“When we started NotCo, it was our goal to make our technology a catalyzer for a more sustainable food system not only for us, but for other brands and manufacturers who share the same ambition,” said Matias Muchnick, co-founder and chief executive officer of NotCo. “[This] is an exciting milestone for the plant-based industry and shows the power of technology’s role in driving mainstream adoption. We’re thrilled to partner with Kraft Heinz and their iconic brands, and work hand-in-hand on building a more sustainable food system.”

The Campbell’s Co. also is embracing AI technology to ensure continued success in food and beverage innovation. Campbell’s is doing this by tracking and curating billions of data points to find inspiration, and leveraging agile design methodology to accelerate the development of new products that resonate with consumers.

Health-focused innovation

AI helps food companies develop new health-focused products, such as functional foods designed to enhance immunity, reduce inflammation, or support gut health. By analyzing large datasets of food, health outcomes and consumer behavior, AI can predict the effectiveness of certain ingredients in achieving health benefits and generate product ideas that meet growing consumer demand for functional and health-conscious food.

AI can predict the optimal combination of ingredients for a particular health benefit, such as improving digestion or boosting brain function. The technology can also analyze individual dietary preferences, genetic dat, and health goals (like weight loss, muscle gain or managing chronic conditions) to develop personalized food products. By tailoring the formulation of foods to individual needs, AI helps create customized nutrition plans or functional foods, such as snacks, supplements or meals that meet specific health requirements.

Nestlé, Vevey, Switzerland, uses January AI, Menlo Park, Calif., digital twin technology as it considers AI for product innovation, such as personalized nutrition for those with special considerations such as diabetes.

According to January AI, the food industry has the potential to enhance the taste and texture of food, as well as its glycemic impact on the body, by using its digital twin capabilities.

“The fastest bucket to get is really around digitizing marketing and sales,” Nestlé chief financial officer Anna Manz said while speaking during a presentation at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference in September. “In the old world, we did focus groups. In the new world, we have an AI virtual consumer that we can test a lot more against, much more quickly. There’s significant efficiencies that we’re already liberating using data and AI in a very different way.”

January AI, a metabolic health platform, looks at the current landscape as a crisis, heightened by rising healthcare costs and an alarming statistic from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that 37.5 million Americans (roughly one in ten) have diabetes, with one in five unaware that they have the condition. It’s a grim picture, but one that January AI has set out to change by promoting well informed eating with generative AI.

Acquiring data about consumers’ blood sugar responses to certain foods is an expensive effort, but it is becoming much cheaper and easier through AI.

A collaboration between Mars, Inc., McLean, Va., and January AI is designed to unlock valuable information to guide product formulation and positively affect public health at the same time.

The project will use January AI’s tools and the company’s R&D capabilities to predict responses to a wide range of different foods and formulations, explained Darren Logan, PhD, vice president of research, Mars.

For those who are prediabetic or who already have diabetes, it means being able to identify trends and patterns in the data and use them to determine healthier food options.

Consumer response

AI can be used to analyze the sensory aspects of food, such as taste, smell, texture and appearance. Through machine learning, AI can predict how a consumer will respond to a product based on these factors, helping companies fine-tune flavors or textures to maximize consumer acceptance. AI can also simulate how different ingredients interact to create the desired sensory profile, which accelerates product development.

French dairy giant Bel Group announced in 2023 it entered into a partnership with Climax Foods, Berkeley, Calif., an AI-driven food startup founded by former Google head of data science and astrophysicist Oliver Zahn.

The collaboration seeks to harness the power of AI to develop plant-based alternatives to traditional dairy products that offer the same taste, mouthfeel and nutritional profile as their animal-based counterparts.

AI’s role in food development is expanding, from formulating new products, to optimizing production processes and creating personalized food solutions. As food innovation continues to evolve, AI helps companies meet changing consumer preferences, drive sustainability, and improve food safety and quality. Ultimately, AI is shaping a future in which food products are healthier, more sustainable and more tailored to individual needs.