Cerealto Siro incorporates IBM Watson AI into food innovation process

Spanish cereal maker Cerealto Siro Foods has incorporated IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence (AI) into its food innovation process for early detection of trends.

The latest initiative will enable the company to inspire new ideas to develop healthier products, adapted to the nutritional needs and tastes of consumers.

Cerealto Siro has worked with IBM Services and its innovation partner I+dea to develop an AI tool that can analyse and anticipate global consumer tastes.

The I+Radar tool is equipped with the AI functionalities of IBM Watson, such as Watson Knowledge Studio, Watson Natural Language Understanding and Watson Discovery News on the IBM Cloud, to monitor what consumers and experts are saying on public social networks.

I+dea director Juan Carlos Martínez said: “At Cerealto Siro Foods we are aware of the need to constantly adapt to the changing tastes and needs of the consumer and we put a lot of effort into developing foods that excite them. For this, we need to cutting edge technologies to help us anticipate demand.

“Since we have introduced artificial intelligence into our creative process, we have clear parameters to follow during our entire food innovation process.”

Cerealto Siro, which introduces more than 250 cereal products to the international market each year, noted that its first AI-informed snack has already entered the UK supermarket.

The new snack product, rice cakes with pea and lentil, was developed in response to the latest consumer preferences for organic, high-protein ingredients that are suitable for vegans and celiacs while being low in sugar and salt.