Cooking burgers with AI? The main thing is that you’re hungry

Accustomed as we are to hearing talk of gourmet cuisine, Michelin-starred restaurants and chefs, and dishes with balanced flavours – a touch of acidity here and a hint of sweetness there – we risk forgetting what the fundamental ingredient is for enjoying a satisfying meal: hunger. Viewed from this angle, our obsession with food is such that, to begin to shake it off, we should only eat when the prospect of biting into an apple seems nothing short of exciting. Of course, the quality of ingredients and a balanced nutritional intake are fundamental to our health, but one generally gets the impression that there has been quite a leap from that to the current situation. However, we must recognise that, since we eat not only out of necessity but also for pleasure, the way in which foods, when combined, tantalise the palate is far from secondary.

A study published in "npj Science of Food" and authored by researchers at Stanford University used an AI model to create new recipes – specifically, new burgers, given the success of the Big Mac. The authors explain that, rather than using an AI model such as ChatGPT – a Large Language Model that would have allowed them to programme rules regarding flavour and texture – they used a diffusion model, a type of AI that automatically learns statistical patterns by observing combinations of ingredients and their quantities. The results show that by learning the statistical patterns of thousands of burger recipes, the AI was able to propose a number of them based on palatability (i.e. how pleasant they are to the palate), nutritional value and environmental impact. According to more than a hundred evaluators, two burgers – the ‘Delicious’ burgers – were generally judged to be better than the Big Mac; in some cases, they were found to be meatier or more flavourful.

However, the satisfaction scores for the two burgers that took environmental impact into account – the ‘Sustainable’ burgers – were lower than those of the Big Mac for the mushroom-based burger, and similar for the mushroom and beef-based one. Finally, it is not hard to imagine that the least popular burgers were those designed to prioritise nutritional quality over palatability – namely the bean-based ones – which were, however, almost twice as healthy as the Big Mac and also significantly less harmful to the environment.

According to the authors, the AI used in this study was able to encode “the collective knowledge of human taste”, transforming the design of new foods “from a craft-based practice of trial and error into a data-driven design science”. However far-fetched it may seem, this approach could prove useful to people with specific dietary needs or those wishing to personalise their diet. Provided, of course, that they are actually hungry in the first place.