Hellmann’s has launched an AI-enabled tool ‘Meal Reveal’ to help households use up more of the food they have in their fridge with new recipe ideas.
Users can scan food in their fridge using their phone camera, with the tool utilising generative AI capabilities in Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to identify the ingredients.
The tool then matches the food to recipes to provide meal suggestions.
It comes as 4.7m tonnes of food that could have been eaten at home is wasted each year, meaning that an average household wastes the equivalent of eight meals a week.
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According to Wrap, approximately 2.9m potatoes, 1.4m tomatoes and the equivalent of 2.1m carrots are thrown away every day in UK homes.
Hellmann’s global VP Christina Bauer-Plank said: “People never set out wanting to throw food away. Food waste is an unintended consequence of our busy lives, where we look in the fridge after a long day and see disparate ingredients but nothing to eat.
“We saw an opportunity here to create a straightforward, easy to use tool. Meal Reveal is powered by the latest Google technology where a simple scan of the leftover ingredients lets you see the delicious potential in your fridge, in the palm of your hand.”
It follows an initiative last year, where Hellmann’s looked to reduce food waste by launching a specially designed jar of mayonnaise that tells consumers when their fridge is at the right temperature.
Crafted by illustrator Ellen Porteus, the design shows hidden illustrations and messages when placed in a fridge that is set below 5°C, by using thermochromic ink.
