Sauce and spreads maker Hellmann’s has launched an AI-enabled app that seeks to prevent food waste by suggesting recipes from ingredients in the fridge.
Developed in collaboration with Google Cloud, the ‘Meal Reveal' app allows users to scan the ingredients in their fridge and receive recipe ideas based on those ingredients.
The Unilever subsidiary added that Meal Reveal was designed in response to the common issue of ‘fridge blindness’ – a contributor to household food waste.
It is a situation when a fridge is full of ingredients, but people aren’t able to see or imagine what meals to make.
Meal Reveal: 'Time-Saving And Convenient'
According to Hellmann’s, Meal Reveal provides a time-saving and convenient solution for consumers struggling to make sense of how the ingredients in their fridge can make a quick, simple meal.
Christina Bauer-Plank, Hellmann’s Global VP stated, “People never set out wanting to throw food away. Food waste is an unintended consequence of our busy lives, where we look in the fridge after a long day and see disparate ingredients but nothing to eat.
“We saw an opportunity here to create a straightforward, easy-to-use tool. Meal Reveal is powered by the latest Google technology where a simple scan of the leftover ingredients lets you see the delicious potential in your fridge, in the palm of your hand.”
How To Use
People can use the camera on their mobile phones to scan food items in their fridges and then upload videos or photographs to the Meal Reveal app.
The tool uses generative AI capabilities in Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to identify the ingredients and provide recipe suggestions.
Laurence Lafont, vice president of strategic industries EMEA at Google Cloud said, “Our generative AI technology has the power to create everyday solutions for people everywhere. As part of our longstanding partnership with Hellmann’s, we were excited to create the innovative solution Meal Reveal to a persistent challenge of seeing the possibilities of the food in our fridge.
“In its nascent stage, the more people use Meal Reveal, the more the tool will learn ingredients in our fridges and help provide the best recipes to use up what we already have.”
Meal Reveal from Hellmann’s was unveiled during this year’s Food Waste Action Week from 18-14 March by UK charity WRAP (The Waste and Resources Action Programme) as part of the Love Food Hate Waste campaign.
Food Waste
British households waste around 4.7 million tonnes of food each year, according to data from WRAP.
This means that an average household wastes the equivalent of eight meals a week, with fresh fruit and vegetables frequently wasted the most.
On a daily basis, UK homes throw away approximately 2.9 million potatoes, 1.4 million tomatoes, and the equivalent of 2.1 million carrots, data showed.
A recent study by the UNEP found that households around the world wasted more than one billion meals per day in 2022.
