• An AI-based algorithm digitizes sweet taste for food and beverage manufacturers.
Israeli startup MAMAY Technologies, founded by entrepreneur Yuval Klein, has developed an AI-based algorithm capable of objectively defining "Sweety" a food product or a drink.
About eight years ago, Yuval Klein began to study different sugars and their sweetness to develop the perfect recipe for Rosetta, an Israeli drink made from sugar and almonds, a perfect balance between bitter and sweet taste. To help the process, he developed an app specifically designed to describe the sweet taste.
In 2020, he becomes a co-founder of the company BlueTree Technologies, a start-up to reduce sugar in fruit juices and milk, demonstrating determination to understand all there was to know about sugars, sweet taste and impact on the consumer.
Realizing that food and beverage manufacturers could also benefit from understanding what "Sweety" for consumers, Klein founded the company in 2022 MAMAY Technologies.
And because the digitization of taste is possible, as founder and CEO, Klein led the development of an AI-based algorithm to objectively describe the sweet taste of products.
Physical and chemical tests
To realize the digitization of the sweet taste, the start-up performs physical and chemical tests on food or drinks with the help of laboratory equipment. These tests analyze the molecules of the studied products.
Understanding these molecules – and their impact on taste and smell when combined – allows MAMAY to objectively map their sweetness profile.
The company recently launched its first software platform (SaaS), designed to provide a "objective simulator of the taste, smell and feel of the product". The platform can quantify the impact of sweet taste based on over 70 eligible sweeteners in food and beverages, and to manage the large amounts of data required in digitizing taste, it was necessary to use artificial intelligence.
As for the possibility that the platform will end up replacing sensory panels, the founder suggested that it could replace at least some of these. Sensory evaluations would still be needed to determine whether consumers like a product or not, but MAMAY's AI-powered algorithm could do the rest.
The start-up has already partnered with companies operating in the bottled water, coffee, milk and tea sectors, who can use the platform to determine the taste profile of their own product as well as that of competing products.
And the sweet taste is only the beginning, promises the representative of the MAMAY company. In the next period, we want to develop services for salty, bitter, sour, umami and kokumi tastes.
Article written by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
Read on White Art and: Black iris – a new source for sugar
