KALAMAZOO — Food developers use a sensory panel to hear what people think about a product before it hits the market. Now, Kalsec is using AI to know for sure.
"We sell primarily spice and herb extracts that go into food as highly functional and innovative ingredients, such as flavoring, natural colors and preservatives," said Roger Nahas, chief innovation officer at Kalsec.
The family-owned company has been around since 1958 and the ingredient supplier for the global food and beverage industry has something new it's cooking up.
"We want to be pioneers in terms of how we apply AI into food science, and into making the best use of the natural food ingredients that we produce," Nahas told FOX 17.
People taste-testing Kalsec products will wear a T-Box; a non-invasive headband type of technology invented by Thimus. Instead of describing what they taste, the T-Box will collect all the data Kalsec needs.
"I will know exactly how you're feeling about the food, how you perceive that, how you're looking at it, how you're enjoying it or or how you want to avoid it," Nahas explained. "This is an invaluable tool for us to better understand and compute and accumulate data by demographics."
This is another way Kalsec helps food and beverage products look and taste better, and last longer naturally.
"These novel flavoring ingredients that we want to develop will also allow the food companies to develop food that is not only more enjoyable but also consumers will consume it and that would reduce waste," he said.
The T-Box is already being used in Kalsec's spice lab in the Netherlands, and the goal is to start using it in Kalamazoo.
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