Food Products Formulation
Formulating food products is a fundamental and likely the most important step in producing a high-quality product. A successful product is defined by the overall satisfaction of the consumer community with the final product. Consumer satisfaction depends on various factors such as sensory characteristics, stability, safety, and cost. On the other hand, food products formulation must also comply with various national, regional, and international food standards (role of sensory evaluation in market development).
Challenges in Formulation
Food formulation essentially involves the selection of ingredients and their concentrations. The performance and physics of each component or food molecule depend on its concentration, the presence of other ingredients (especially small molecules), and the physical characteristics of the food. As a result, predicting the final product’s characteristics, especially when affected by processes like heating or storage conditions, can be difficult and often involves trial and error. Formulation might aim to reduce costs, or in some cases, fundamental changes in formulation may be necessary. Additionally, formulation might need to be updated for new equipment and methods. Each of these changes requires time and investment to find a solution.
Scientific Resource Challenges
Although, today there are numerous scientific resources such as books, research papers, websites, educational videos, and patents available for acquiring knowledge in the field of formulation, in many cases, the published knowledge only helps in improving formulation ideas and not the needed formula, due to differences in raw materials and processes. In such situations, reviewing all the data and results becomes time-consuming and costly.
Modeling Challenges
In certain fields of engineering and natural sciences, various software tools based on physical laws and equations of systems have been developed for initial design and simulation. These computational software tools, grounded in heavy computations, offer researchers insights into the consequences of any change in the simulated system. The results of such modeling save both time and costs in research. However, complex systems like food products, which also undergo food processing, have not been modeled in formulation software.
This is likely due to the vast diversity of raw materials, the lack of standardization in properties, and the heterogeneity of structure and form. Additionally, the computational cost of such a system would be extremely high due to lot of real-time calculations.
AI Capabilities
Today, AI has demonstrated its ability to provide logical answers, based on prior information across various domains, particularly in language models. AI, based on the model structure and the number of parameters, has shown great potential in solving highly complex problems, such as predicting protein structures. Moreover, by combining AI with classical methods, computational speed has been significantly increased. In fact, AI continually updates the parameters of classical models with real-time inputs and knowledge, accelerating convergence. This technique is being actively developed by major companies in the field of food industry innovation.
AI and Food Product Formulation
The proposed idea is to create a model based on data from published articles, books, websites, and other available resources to develop an AI system that understands the interactions of food components in order to achieve defined goals. Given that both applied and fundamental research, as well as patents, cover various aspects of food formulation, a significant body of knowledge has been published and needs to be analyzed with modern tools and integrated into a model.
It is important to note that in modeling, goals must be defined quantitatively, which presents several challenges. The primary challenge likely lies in sensory evaluation of the product. However, many product and process features can be quantitatively integrated and extracted in modeling. Implementing a predictive AI model for food formulation requires an interdisciplinary scientific collaboration.
