Chilean Company Uses AI to Reproduce Turtle Soup
2024-05-05
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1Chilean food company NotCo has been working on a popular meal for people in Latin America and Asia: turtle soup.
2The meal tastes like turtle soup but has no parts of the creature in it.
3The company says it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create the food.
4It hopes to raise awareness about the endangered reptile.
5Bernardo Moltedo leads the science behind the effort for NotCo.
6He used the term impact - meaning an effect or change - to describe the effort.
7Moltedo added, "We have been working on this for several years. We always ask ourselves 'why not,' that's why we ended up working to help endangered species, as is the case with turtle soup."
8NotCo uses an AI program to help it decide what to use.
9The program examined 300,000 plants and made 260 quintillion combinations until it found a mix of five proteins that most closely reproduced the taste of turtle meat.
10For now, neither the plant-based turtle meat nor the soup are for sale.
11But the company plans on holding an online class to teach people how to prepare the soup.
12With a presence in 12 countries, NotCo creates foods such as hamburgers, milk, mayonnaise or ice cream from plants.
13These food creations have a similar taste and texture to foods prepared with traditional animal-based ingredients.
14Green turtles - traditionally used in turtle soup - are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of endangered species.
15The creatures' numbers are affected by pollution, extreme weather and fishing.
16The exploitation of these sea turtles is prohibited in most countries in the world.
17However, turtle soup remains in high demand in countries throughout Asia and Latin America, including China, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia and others.
18I'm John Russell.
1Chilean food company NotCo has been working on a popular meal for people in Latin America and Asia: turtle soup. 2The meal tastes like turtle soup but has no parts of the creature in it. 3The company says it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create the food. It hopes to raise awareness about the endangered reptile. 4Bernardo Moltedo leads the science behind the effort for NotCo. He used the term impact - meaning an effect or change - to describe the effort. 5Moltedo added, "We have been working on this for several years. We always ask ourselves 'why not,' that's why we ended up working to help endangered species, as is the case with turtle soup." 6NotCo uses an AI program to help it decide what to use. The program examined 300,000 plants and made 260 quintillion combinations until it found a mix of five proteins that most closely reproduced the taste of turtle meat. 7For now, neither the plant-based turtle meat nor the soup are for sale. But the company plans on holding an online class to teach people how to prepare the soup. 8With a presence in 12 countries, NotCo creates foods such as hamburgers, milk, mayonnaise or ice cream from plants. These food creations have a similar taste and texture to foods prepared with traditional animal-based ingredients. 9Green turtles - traditionally used in turtle soup - are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of endangered species. The creatures' numbers are affected by pollution, extreme weather and fishing. The exploitation of these sea turtles is prohibited in most countries in the world. 10However, turtle soup remains in high demand in countries throughout Asia and Latin America, including China, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia and others. 11I'm John Russell. 12Juan Casas reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English. 13______________________________________________ 14Words in This Story 15endangered - adj. describes an animal or plant at risk of dying off completely 16quintillion - n. a number equal to 1 followed by 18 zeros 17combination - n. a resulting of mixing two or more things 18texture - n. the way a food feels in your mouth 19ingredient -- n. one of the things that are used to make a food,