Tag Archives: Food

McDonald’s discontinues AI drive-thru trial as fast food industry explores automation

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McDonald’s has terminated its trial of an artificial intelligence chatbot in its drive-thrus, sparking concerns about the fast-food industry’s hasty adoption of this technology.

The largest burger chain in the world is removing its AI-based automated ordering system from over 100 restaurants throughout the US.

This system, capable of responding to customer orders using AI voice, was undergoing testing under a contract between McDonald’s and IBM that began in 2021.

McDonald’s has not specified the reasons for ending the trial. As reported by Restaurant Business, the company informed franchisees that the technology would be discontinued on July 26th.

A McDonald’s spokesperson mentioned to the publication that a decision regarding automated ordering plans would be made by year-end, emphasizing that “voice ordering solutions at the drive-thru are part of our restaurants’ future.”

Fast-food chains have displayed considerable interest in incorporating generative AI into their operations in recent years. Apart from McDonald’s, various companies such as Wendy’s, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and Del Taco have implemented this technology in their drive-thrus. Yum! Brands, the owner of Taco Bell and KFC, also declared its adoption of AI earlier this year. “AI First Mindset” at a fast food restaurant.

The fast-food industry is increasingly receptive to AI as a substitute for human workers, aiding in reducing escalating labor costs. Following California’s enactment of a new minimum wage regulation for fast-food employees, companies are hastening the integration of AI technology to handle tasks like taking customer orders.

While companies promote AI as the future of the fast-food industry, these technologies have been featured in viral videos and covered in the media when orders go awry. McDonald’s drive-thru AI blunder became viral last year after several TikTok videos showcased the system incorrectly adding items, such as butter packs, or doubling the order quantities.

In one video, two women were captured laughing and requesting the system to cease adding items to their order, as it appeared to tally hundreds of dollars’ worth of McNuggets to their bill.

Automated systems have faced criticism for misinterpreting customer orders, as well as for depending on outsourced human labor for their operation. Presto Automation, which supplies AI services to fast-food chains, disclosed in an SEC filing last year that it employs customer-facing staff in countries like the Philippines, who spend around 70% of their time there.

In addition to drive-thru ordering, companies are exploring leveraging generative AI for creating digital chatbots on their apps or utilizing image recognition for estimating wait times.

In December, McDonald’s partnered with Google to develop a chatbot named “Ask Pickles” for guiding employees on tasks like cleaning restaurant equipment. The collaboration also encompasses exploring other potential applications of generative AI. As per Bloomberg’s report.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Cocaine seems to exploit brain pathways that prioritize food and water.

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Diagram of the human brain reward pathway

Fernando da Cunha/Science Photo Library

Continued use of drugs such as cocaine and morphine is thought to affect the way the brain prioritizes the body’s basic needs, but we are only now understanding how this happens.

When people repeatedly misuse drugs, they can experience long-term behavioral changes, where they choose to take drugs instead of doing what they need to do, such as eating or drinking.

A brain pathway called the mesolimbic reward system is thought to be involved in this process, but few studies have directly compared the system’s response to drug intake and its response when its innate needs are not met.

now, bowen tan from Rockefeller University in New York and colleagues showed that the same neurons are activated in these two situations. They revealed this using sophisticated microscopy equipment that can track the activity of individual neurons in the brains of mice in a state of withdrawal after repeated exposure to these drugs.

“There has long been a debate in this field about whether there are specialized cell types that encode only drug value and specialized cell types that encode only natural reward value,” Tan said. To tell. “What we saw is that these drugs of abuse typically activate the same set of neurons as natural rewards.”

The researchers also observed that after giving mice cocaine or morphine, their food and water intake decreased, while the neural responses needed to satisfy basic needs were disrupted.

“What’s really remarkable about this finding is that the strong neural responses to food and water are almost replaced by responses to drugs,” he says. Jeremy Day At the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “[This suggests] Drug rewards can override the way the brain converts desire states into behaviors that satisfy those desires.”

Tan and his team also identified a gene called.Rev which appears to be necessary for the drug to have this effect. Rev Because it is part of a cell signaling pathway that is also found in humans, future research could explore how inhibiting this pathway could be used as a treatment for substance misuse, he said. To tell.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The impact of climate change on food costs: A prediction of rising prices and worsening conditions

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Food prices are on the rise

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Because of global warming, you are already paying more and more for groceries. And rising temperatures will cause food prices to rise significantly over the next decade.

By 2035, rising temperatures alone are expected to increase global food prices by 0.9 to 3.2 percent each year, according to a study conducted in collaboration with the European Central Bank. This would increase the overall inflation rate by 0.3 to 1.2 percentage points.

“We are often shocked and surprised by the magnitude of these effects,” he says. Maximilian Kotz He mentioned discussions he had with economists during his research at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Abnormal weather due to global warming Increasingly impacting food production around the world And if farmers don't adapt, the losses will become even more severe as the world continues to warm.

To find out how this is affecting food prices, Kotz and his colleagues looked at monthly price data for a variety of goods and services for 121 countries from 1996 to 2021 and the exposure to which those countries were exposed. The weather conditions were compared.

Researchers looked at the correlation between food prices and factors such as average monthly temperatures, temperature fluctuations, droughts and extreme rainfall. They found a strong association between average temperature and food prices a month or so later.

Areas north of 40 degrees latitude, such as New York City, Madrid, and Beijing, experienced warmer-than-average winter temperatures, leading to lower food prices. But not just in the summer, temperatures in other parts of the world have always been above average, causing food prices to rise.

Moreover, the impact on prices is long-lasting. “If prices go up based on one of these shocks, they stay high for at least the rest of the period,” Kotz says.

The study didn't look at why prices have increased, but one possible explanation is that extreme heat is reducing yields, he said. “The vines may be dry when the crop should be harvested.”

Kotz said factors such as extreme rainfall had a smaller impact on food prices than average temperatures. This may be because flooding tends to be localized, whereas above-average temperatures can be very widespread.

Other studies have reached similar conclusions, Kotz said. But his team went a step further and investigated how food prices would change based on increases in average temperatures in climate model projections. Under the team's worst-case emissions scenario, global food inflation due to climate change will exceed 4% per year by 2060. However, the team believes the 2035 prediction is more reliable, as many other factors could have changed by then.

“There are a lot of things that could happen that will change the way the economy responds to climate change,” Kotz said. For example, inflationary pressures would be reduced if farmers adapted their practices to better cope with rising temperatures. But so far, he says, there is no sign that farmers are adapting.

“I think these are realistic predictions. They are based on solid empirical evidence.” Matin Kaim At the University of Bonn, Germany. “We need to recognize the fact that climate change poses new and major challenges to food and nutrition security.”

according to Food Price Index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The cost of food fell in real terms between 1960 and 2000, but has risen since then. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused a massive surge – factors that influence this Protests are occurring in many countries. The index price has since fallen, but remains higher than before the invasion.

Like the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, the European Central Bank aims to: keep inflation around 2%. Rising food inflation will make achieving this goal even more difficult, Kotz said.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

PFAS – The Persistent Chemicals – Are Becoming Common in Food Packaging

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Potentially dangerous chemicals may be present in food packaging

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Food packaging and utensils commonly contain up to 68 “forever chemicals” that can pose health risks, many of which regulators are potentially unaware of. There is a gender.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a type of synthetic chemical used to make products such as nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing. The bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms in PFAS are so strong that it can take hundreds to thousands of years for the bonds to break down.

Many of these chemicals are associated with adverse health outcomes, including: cancer and reproduction and immunity problem.

“There are thousands of these chemicals,” he says. Birgit Geueke At the Swiss Food Packaging Forum organization. “We wanted to understand what information is known about the presence of PFAS in food packaging.”

Geweke and his colleagues analyzed 1,312 studies conducted around the world that looked in detail at chemicals that come into contact with food that can be generated during manufacturing, packaging, and cooking. He then cross-referenced these chemicals with his list of known PFAS.

The research team found that 68 types of PFAS are commonly present across food-contact materials, such as packaging and utensils. Of these, 61 were not included in the regulatory list mandating the use of PFAS because they were not previously known to be present in such substances.

Of the 68 PFAS, only 39 have been tested for toxicity. One of the substances analyzed was perfluorooctanoic acid, which has been shown to have the potential to cause cancer in humans, based on limited evidence that it can cause testicular and kidney cancer. It is classified, Geueke said.

“I think it’s the manufacturer’s responsibility to minimize the use of PFAS,” she says. Regulators around the world are working in the right direction, she says. For example, the European Union recently proposed banning most PFAS.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Starch-based super thickeners lower calorie and carbohydrate content in food

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Starch is a component of wheat flour and is used as a thickening agent in cooking.

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Making small sheets or cages from starch particles turns them into super-thickeners, which can reduce the calorie content of food.

Starches are often added to foods such as soups to thicken them, but this increases their calorie and carbohydrate content. now, lee peiron Researchers at Cornell University in New York have discovered that by arranging starch particles into special shapes, they can reduce the amount of starch in foods without sacrificing texture.

Starch particles expand when heated, which thickens the food. This means that the particles get stuck together and there is less room for the liquid components of the dish to flow freely. The researchers wondered if they could recreate this effect while reducing the amount needed by hollowing out starch blocks. “But you can't carve starch grains like pumpkins,” says Lee.

Instead, he and his colleagues devised a method that uses starch particles extracted from amaranth grains and assembles them into three-dimensional shapes by mixing them with water and oil. Starch particles were placed around the oil droplets, and the researchers used a combination of heating and freeze-drying to remove the two liquids. This left only starchy structures, some shaped like cages with a hollow center, others like sheets stacked on top of each other so that the liquid was trapped between them.

The research team discovered that these starch structures are so good as thickeners that they can halve the amount of starch typically needed to thicken foods.

Fan Zhu Researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand say the use of these granules as building blocks for a new class of hollow starch structures is so innovative that starches could become a big part of future food design. It has said. However, Zhu said amaranth starch is expensive and difficult to source in large quantities, so it would be advantageous to apply the new method to more affordable and abundant starches, such as starch made from corn. says. “And more research is needed into what happens when you put these kinds of structures in your mouth,” he says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The Impact of Green Accounting on the True Cost of Cheap Food for a Better World

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In these difficult times, it seems like complete nonsense to say that food prices are cheap. In the UK, the average grocery bill is Up more than 12% in the past year. But it is. The price tag on food is about two-thirds lower than it would be if we paid full price. But don’t worry. We have a plan to resolve this issue.

That may sound unpleasant. Who wants their grocery bills to go up even more? But in reality, we are already paying the real price, and most of it is just being secretly hidden from us. “In total, he pays four times as much for meals,” he says. Alexander Muller At the sustainability think tank TMG in Berlin. First, pay at the cash register. And we pay the health, environmental and social costs of producing that food, primarily through taxes.

green accounting

These costs are “externalities”. Things that are not free are treated as free, such as the environmental destruction caused by agriculture and the health costs of obesity. Now the producers are ignoring them and letting the rest of us pick up the bill. Maybe it won’t last very long. Economists and accountants – don’t yawn in the back. – We are working on a system called True Cost Accounting (TCA) that aims to internalize these externalities and upend decades of economic tradition. If we play our cards right, we won’t all end up spilling more cash at the register, but rather a massive rebalancing of global supply…

Source: www.newscientist.com