Creating mock meats, as well as seasoning and marinating vegetables to emulate meat, is nothing new in the plant-based food space. Food bloggers and renowned chefs have been trying their hand at the task for over a decade now. With the market for clean, vegan food expanding every day, it’s no surprise that food companies are jumping on the trend. The Not Company is one of these companies, but they’re approaching the matter in a different way. Their top chef is Giuseppe. He’s one of the hardest working chefs in the business, never leaving his post, some may even say he’s a vegan-food making machine. And that’s because he is.

Giuseppe, is the artificial intelligence algorithm behind the Chilean food tech start-up, The Not Company. They have taken the process of making delicious, plant-based food and boiled it down to an actual science. Their brainchild, Giuseppe, takes the molecular structure of meat, anything from steak to pork, and is able to replicate it using plant-based ingredients to create meat’s unique flavor and texture.


“One would tend to think that the molecular structure of meat is exclusive to meat, and that’s not true,” said Matias Muchnik, founder of the Not Company, in a video interview with Al Jazeera.

Giuseppe is not just a food-making machine, though. As it details on the Not Company website, Giuseppe’s artificial intelligence is programmed to enhance nutritional availability while simultaneously taking care of the environment so, “it not only understands human perception of taste and texture suggesting clever recipes to create tasty foods, but it also understands there’s a relative availability and use of resources for every single living thing.”

So, what did Giuseppe say when asked what the food industry should be doing? The unbiased robot gave it to us straight: we should not be feeding plants to animals in order to get our meat, cheese, milk, and eggs; but we should be using plants to actually make them. Considering that animal agriculture uses 23 percent of the global water supply, 33 percent of the global arable land for livestock feed, and 45 percent of global land for livestock in general, we’d say that’s one smart robot!

“The demand for protein is high in the developed world (an average of 103g/person/day is consumed today),” said Nil Zacharias, Co-Founder of One Green Planet. “But because of concerns ranging from sustainability to health, including the desire to avoid allergens like dairy, soy, eggs, and gluten, as well as saturated fat and cholesterol, consumers are looking for cleaner protein options from plant-based sources. The future of protein is here … and it ain’t meat (or at least, not meat as you know it)!”


Guiseppe makes it possible for consumers to get the same experience in terms of texture and flavor, but with better nutritional value – and as a major bonus, it is done using less resources and less contamination.

The Not Company’s products, including “Not Milk” and “Not Hot Dogs” will be on selected supermarket shelves in Chile next month. To keep up to date with Not Company, check out their website.


Lead Image Source: The Not Company

Advertisement