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After many decades of studies telling that fast food and sugar are not healthy, the point is starting to hit home. We are finally starting to realise that the processed food that we buy at the store might not be good for us. A lot of these foods lack many essential vitamins and nutrients. Even though the corporations that produce them know about it, they are helpless because they don’t see a means of adding them to the mix. In recent years, there has been a push towards improving the nutritious value of food in the food processing industry. Nuritas provides them with a way ahead by helping companies add nutrition to their products.

The conventional food industry has been bogged down with slow processes of change. This is because its intention has always been to minimise running costs and maximise quantity. But now with the advent of the internet and social media, things are changing. People are increasingly getting aware of the dangers of processed food missing important nutrients. The industry is in dire need to reinvent itself by producing food that tastes good and is healthy as well.

The artificial intelligence advantage

Nora Khaldi, the founder of Nuritas mentions that the biggest difficulty in the field is the identification of peptides. These peptides as additives are a must to the processing industry. The identifying process has been manually done all these years and thus, quite unsustainable for the food companies. What sets Nuritas apart is the way it combines technology and food science. Nuritas uses artificial intelligence algorithms to identify peptides faster. With AI, the process is expedited and also much more feasible for identifying food ingredients that contain peptides.

Nuritas is developing a database of molecules called peptides which are found in food and plans to sell these ingredients which contain peptides, to the food and supplement companies.

The company has aligned itself into calling itself an AI company more than a food tech one. Through AI, Nuritas can cut a lot of redundant manual effort taken by biochemists and molecular biologists in the field.

The company’s algorithm is now searching through over 30 billion peptides through a variety of food sources. The system then tries to identify the ones with a health benefit and try extracting them to be used as an additive. Depending on the size of the genome, the process duration might vary. But with AI, there is always the scope to learn from mistakes and make it more efficient the next time around.

Reducing wastage and creating new alternatives

Another channel Nuritas is looking into, is to reduce wastage of food and to decrease environmental footprint. The startup believes its algorithm can create uses for the roughage that usually gets thrown away, like banana peels and orange pips. If there could be tangible use cases for these products, it definitely would reduce wastage. It could also pave way for extracting nutrients from alternative sources.

Nuritas raised $3.4 million in funding in its Series A funding and is looking to scale up its processes. The techniques it uses are revolutionary and more importantly sustainable and safe, making it a startup to look out for in the future.

Original article: Nuritas AI Turns Unhealthy Food Healthy at Artificial Intelligence in Organizations / Machian Future