Kevin Wallenstein is a health nut, according to his colleagues at snack behemoth Mondelez International. He runs and paddleboards, and when he does snack, it’s on fruit, not the Chips Ahoy and Oreos that Mondelez makes.
So working in biscuit digital research & development—where cookie and cake tastings may be necessary four to five times a week—can be trying, said Wallenstein, who is section manager.
“The number of tastings we have is not fun,” he said. “I used to work in Sour Patch Kids, and if you did a tasting every day for a week, it was a nightmare.”
But now artificial intelligence could transform Wallenstein’s life. A new tool developed by Mondelez is speeding up the creation of snack recipes and optimizing them to fit certain taste profiles. Which means less lab work, faster time to production and—for better or worse—fewer in-house tastings.
“The point is we get there faster,” Wallenstein said. “The consumer wants the product to taste like X. We’re not stopping iterating until it tastes like X … we’re doing things more efficiently.”
Food companies like Mondelez are racing to try out AI in every area of their business, from supply chains to marketing to recipe development, said Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.
The companies are under pressure: Capturing the American public’s attention is no small feat in a jam-packed foodscape that churns out more than double the amount of recommended calories for each person in the country. New types of products and brand offshoots are the way to do that, Nestle said, and if AI can get there faster and better, expect to see its role grow.
Not everything will change though. “Seems to me you still need human tasters,” Nestle noted. (Sorry, Kevin).
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