The Science of Taste Impact on the Food and Beverage Industry of a Better Understanding of the Human Palate

The science of taste Impact on the food and beverage industry of a better understanding of the human palate

Sponsored by: The science of taste 1 Impact on the food and beverage industry of a better understanding of the human palate

Contents

2 About the research and acknowledgments

3 Executive summary

4 Introduction

5 Chapter 1 Big data: How AI and data analytics disrupt the food and beverages industry

8 Chapter 2 Food and travel: The globalisation of our tastes

11 Chapter 3 The new ordinary: Picking your favourite diet

14 Conclusion

About the research and acknowledgments

The science behind taste: Impact on the food and beverage industry of a better understanding of the human palate is an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by The Japan Food Product Overseas Promotion Center (JFOODO). It explores how new technologies, new lifestyles and scientific research have contributed to new understandings of the human palate. Better insight may dispel long-held beliefs about which tastes work best together, leading to new pairings that may not only taste better together, but are also healthier. This could not only indicate new opportunities for the food and beverage industry but also challenge these traditional industries to adjust their product development and business strategies.

The report includes input from four experts in the food industry. We would like to thank the following people for their time and insight:

• Brian Power, lecturer in nutrition and honorary senior dietitian, University College London Hospital

• Isabelle Decitre, founder and CEO, ID Capital

• Bernard Lahousse, founder, Foodpairing

• Robin Zavou, executive chef, Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong

The report was written by Lucy Jenkins and edited by Naka Kondo.

Executive summary

Our preferences, and taste, for food are not awareness of where and how their food as static as they seem. But some combinations ingredients have been grown, while giving do tend to stick. Is there a science behind producers more precise forecasting taste and what we find appealing? This paper models of supply and demand. explores the roles new technologies, our lifestyles and food science have played in • Globalisation and the homogenised influencing the food and beverages industry, diet: as people travel more and are our understanding of taste, and our future exposed to a wider range of food through dining experience. various media, we are eating a more homogenised diet no matter where we live, The key takeaways of this report are: which is straining resources. Therefore, supporting global diversity in tastes while • How technology is informing our keeping food systems sustainable is technologies such as machine tastebuds: becoming a significant challenge. learning are being developed to deal with the complexity and variety of data • New scientific findings will continue in the food industry and our very own to redefine our optimal diet going tastebuds. New technologies inform some forward: the more we develop an of the biggest consumer companies on understanding of our palate, the more it taste preferences to adequately meet becomes apparent that taste preferences consumer needs. relate to numerous factors such as sensitivity thresholds, learning, genetics, • How technologies are helping society nutritional deficiencies, and early exposure explore new flavours, and new to certain foods. combinations of taste: new technologies have also enabled companies to extract • The new ordinary: new information different aromas from food ingredients, about food ingredients and taste not only and digitise them, to make entirely new confirm the obvious ways to consume flavours and food products—as well as food, but also predict new and less revealing non-traditional combinations of expected ingredient pairings. There is food ingredients that will go well together. creativity in blending human and artificial intelligence, which may open many more • New technologies have the potential doors in how we could taste and perceive algorithms such to lessen food waste: food in future. as those used by Consumer Flavour Intelligence inform major companies to optimise food production by striking the preferences shared by a larger number of consumers, helping them to reduce waste and over-production. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data have also been instrumental in giving consumers

Introduction

White wine and seafood, red meat and red citrus, vinegars or other ferments. A lot of wine. Fish with lemon, and lamb with mint. it is trial and error, which has been honed These are some of the most widely known throughout the centuries and, depending food and flavour pairings that appear on on the chef’s preferences, take into account thousands of menus the world over and have seasonality and what is freshest at that time.” persisted over centuries—from Michelin- starred fine dining to beachside cafes. What is the future dining experience? If you had asked an educated person even merely But are these combinations still as relevant a decade ago, you may have received a wry today? Now, it has become more or less response on robotic waiters perhaps, or a acceptable to ask for whichever wine you sauce that tastes of one thing but is composed desire when ordering your steak, wherever of something else entirely—but this is a reality you are, while experimental chefs combine closer than we think. all sorts of unusual ingredients. When he opened The Fat Duck in Bray, England in From machines creating new tastes and 1995, British chef Heston Blumenthal’s snail flavours to algorithms that detect even the porridge and white chocolate and caviar slightest blemish on an otherwise perfectly evidently piqued the interest of thousands respectable fruit, AI and data science are of diners who patiently endured the months’ shaping the future of food, and ultimately long waiting list. our tastes.

Mr Blumenthal’s other unorthodox pairings AI is also integral when it comes to food have also included strawberries and coriander, sustainability and food security. This is a beetroot and green peppercorn jelly, and looming issue that keeps many a food scientist chocolate and smoked eel. awake at night: just how do we feed the world’s booming population when climate To better understand the science behind food change is very clearly wreaking havoc on pairings and “the sensations of taste” if you crops and food sources globally? like, then it’s all about the balance of textures and flavours and how they enhance each other, says Robin Zavou, executive chef of the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong.

“Take a nice piece of turbot,” he says. “It’s already quite robust and meaty as a fish and if you roast it on the bone, then you’ll have even more flavour coming through from the bone itself so you’ll look at something to balance out the dish.

“If you want an enhancer, you can add a citrus or vinegar to bring out the flavour—especially when it comes to sauces. It’s all about acidity—

Chapter 1 Big data: How AI and data analytics disrupt the food and beverages industry

As little as 50 years ago, flavours and example, under “fresh”, “tinned” or “pureed” individual consumer preferences were and each one broken down into a whole quite straightforward and ingrained. spectrum of different aroma profiles.

That’s all changed now. Adventurous food To Mr Lahousse, a strawberry is not merely tech start-ups and food scientists are subtly a strawberry. It is a rich melting pot of a altering our food perceptions so that you few dozen aromas. The average consumer may end up eating broccoli, and enjoying it, using their keenest sense of smell would without even realising. only be able to detect a couple, and even then would struggle to name what they think AI is a field of computer science that deals they can detect. with smart machines that aim to mimic the human brain. It is increasingly used By using a method called GC-MS (gas by various industries, companies and chromatography–mass spectrometry), government agencies to make accurate Mr Lahousse is able to extract different predictions on human behaviour, aromas from a strawberry and then characteristics and preferences to build digitise it to make entirely new flavours up a more or less accurate profile of a and food products. subject. The food and beverage industry is no exception, where aggregated data “A strawberry is actually a blend of five and machine learning give in-depth analysis different aroma compounds of ethyl to our very own tastebuds. butanoate (fruity), gamma-decalactone (peach/coconut), furaneol (caramel) It may surprise you, but our sense of smell, butanoic acid (cheesy) and (Z)-3-hexenal rather more so than our taste plays a (green),” he says. dominant role in our flavour experience. Olfaction helps us differentiate up to 10,000 “When different foods share certain key different aroma molecules. Think about having aromas they are more likely to pair well a cup of coffee with the delicious scents of in a recipe. We all know the classic roasted coffee beans wafting out of the cup, combination of strawberry and chocolate. and then try drinking it while holding your It’s mainly the shared ‘roasted’ aromas nose. Bitter, much? connecting these ingredients.

Bernard Lahousse is a food scientist and Strawberry also matches with Parmesan the man behind the world’s largest online through its cheesy aromas or with basil “flavour database”. Foodpairing categorises via citrus aromas. That’s how Foodpairing thousands of aromas and uses them to inform confirms the traditional pairings we some of the biggest consumer companies know, while also revealing non-traditional on taste preferences to help meet consumer combinations which we’re working on to need. A tomato’s taste would be logged, for develop new products.”

It also informs Mr Lahousse to make forecasts and sustainability, and technology is in consumers’ overall preferences. By digitally helping to meet these demands. analysing the aroma and taste components of said strawberry, his team at Foodpairing As the global population continually can also predict (to an accuracy of 70%) rises and is due to reach 9.8bn by 2050, 1 that consumers will like a certain beer for according to the UN, how do we address example, based on their penchant for the the chronic challenge of the estimated delicate balance of fruit versus cheese 2bn people who are expected to be versus vegetable compounds. undernourished by the same year? Over the last several decades, farmers, “It helps us develop food that people want crop growers and decision-makers in the and opens new avenues for them to explore. industry have pondered this question Our Consumer Flavour Intelligence recipe using as advanced technology as they optimisation will inform companies such had at the time. Machinery pulled by as Nestlé and Unilever to develop products animals became automated over time that have a greater appeal to a larger to sustain the booming population. audience, helping them to reduce waste Now these automated machineries work of other products,” says Mr Lahousse. alongside advanced AI and machine learning that can analyse crop growth, As an example of how this kind of technology distribution and consumption to make can be applied at the corporate level, US spice informed predictions and recommendations and seasonings company McCormick recently for food industry stakeholders. linked up with IBM as part of an ongoing research project that is using AI to develop This end-to-end decision making has new flavours and foods engineered entirely become ever more crucial, in light of on hundreds of thousands of flavour profiles. various scandals that have rocked the food industry over the last few decades. It will see McCormick’s product developers These scandals, understandably, have use IBM’s AI capabilities by mapping hundreds driven consumer curiosity in knowing of millions of data points and predicting where their food comes from. new flavour combinations, which McCormick expects to launch this year under the name of ONE: its first AI-enabled product platform.

With the availability of more data and more information, people’s taste and preferences are also increasingly affected by them. There is increasing demand from the consumers to know where their food comes from. This has put pressure on the industry to disclose information around traceability

1 United Nations https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html

Several laws have come into effect—such consumers through secure digitalisation as the EU’s General Food Law, which was and smart packaging solutions], we’ve introduced in 2002—which now makes it seen multi-national corporations in food compulsory for food businesses to identify as well as agriculture implementing their where their products have come from and recommendations, and thus inheriting a where they are going. A prominent example large set of data that becomes an intrinsic of when such laws are needed comes from part of their intellectual property.” when dangerously high levels of dioxin, a chemical formed as a by product of some Giving consumers awareness of where manufacturing processes such as smelting, and how their food ingredients have been was found in milk on a Dutch farm in 2004. grown meets their expectations for more transparancy over food sourcing and makes The culprit was found to be contaminated food industry stakeholders more precise. animal feed in potato peelings. However, the With generative forecasting models, food Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed ensured product manufactureres can consider how that the milk never reached consumers and they can evolve their product offerings to that farms in other countries were barred from suit today’s consumer preferences, which trading until the issue was resolved. also directly impacts what, exactly, we are getting on our plates. Food is also travelling greater distances than ever before to get to our plates. Depending on where you live, that juicy tomato could have travelled 1,500 miles just so you could choose it. With more distances and time involved in the process, more consumers want the comfort of being able to trace where their food came from. If we were all buying from our local farmer, we’d have that knowledge already to hand. So with this desire for more information on food sourcing and sustainability, more technology is required to support it.

Isabelle Decitre is one of the driving forces and founders behind ID Capital, a venture capital firm based in Singapore that invests in start-ups in the foodtech and agritech domains. “At the moment, the food industry is embracing the systemic shift towards end-to-end traceability—conscientous supply chains, if you like,” she says. “As investors in ScanTrust [a company that allows brand owners to connect directly with end-

Chapter 2 Food and travel: The globalisation of our tastes

You are in an airport in South America Globally, it can be argued that we are eating a and hungry, you roam around looking for more homogenised diet. We consume around something to soothe your raging appetite. four to five times more meat than 50 years You spy a well-known burger chain—exactly ago, which can be produced cheaply and the same as the one in your hometown— quickly all over the world as animal life spans perhaps with a bit of local flavour added. are shortened for slaughter.2 Populations Do you make a beeline for familarity or go from developing countries in particular to a place frequented by locals but with are eating more meat than ever before, a possibly indecipherable menu and risk as economies grow and meat production spending the next eight hours in regret? increases. For instance, Asia’s meat production has increased 15-fold between 1961 and 2014. People are travelling more for business and leisure, and increasingly both at the same time, As food companies grew and wielded giving rise to what is now known as “bleisure”. more influence, the more power they had Does this mean tastes are diversifying, or is over more people’s diets. Now, you can’t the world heading for homogeneity in taste? go to many countries without stumbling over a McDonalds let’s say, or a Starbucks Over millennia, our food consumption selling exactly the same as they would in patterns have been shaped, largely, by every other outlet. Our diets, possibly, are culture and globalisation as we ventured getting universally unhealthier depending further afield from our established on where we live, but could globalisation settlements and across landmasses and actually also be beneficial? oceans. We have evolved in a way that makes us enjoy a huge array of tastes and flavours The upside to globalisation is we have more because a wider array of ingested nutrients flavours permeating more cities. Historically, ensures a better chance of survival. Our as people travelled and relocated to new genes enable us to taste the five flavours on places, they brought with them traditional the currently accepted taste spectrum: sweet, home cuisine, which then was adapted and salty, sour, bitter and the somewhat enigmatic modified over the decades. In some cases, umami (loosely translated to savoury). non-local food became one of the early defining flavours of a particular place—albeit However, as mass produced food became “fused” to make it more palatable to local more readily available and machines tastebuds—think Italian pizza in New York, eventually took over storage, preparation say with a thicker crust than would be seen and cooking, demand has soared for in Naples or chicken tikka masala, made less foodstuffs that were previously designated spicy in Birmingham, England for example. as occasional or luxury food.

2 Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consumption

Fusion cuisine, which combines elements a witty caption, or encouraging people to tag of different culinary traditions, has risen a friend to enjoy a shareable dessert, tech- in popularity as chefs and cooks around savvy establishments are honing in on food the world take on the different styles and and drink-loving users and tugging on their methods to suit a wider audience as urban proverbial food-strings. areas become more culturally diverse. Similar regions also share similar ingredients, The rise of social media has also transported so you’re more likely to find Vietnamese- the role of chefs and bartenders as inspired food in Thailand or Spanish international actors, with pop-ups and ingredients in Italy, which have been collaborations happening across the globe. adopted and adapted to fit in with the This trend has also helped to emphasise one’s local culinary scene. perception of dining as an “experience”. The “travelling chef” or “wandering bartender” So the desire for Mexican in India or sushi weren’t necessarily heard of 20 or 30 years in the Middle East is giving people more ago, but restaurants, and now increasingly choice about what to eat, but conversely, bars and drinks companies, are paying good areas that are popular with tourists are money for industry talents to come and share also more likely to offer authentic cuisine their expertise and delicious offerings to a to continue to lure in the punters. Hoi An, wider audience. a picturesque town in central Vietnam, for example, offers numerous iterations Hong Kong’s Taste Kitchen, a pop-up space of its indigenous cao lau—noodles with in the depths of Sai Ying Pun, regularly hosts barbecued pork and vegetables—whereas international chefs where diners tuck into you may not see it in other less touristy authentic Irish, Mexican or Italian food for a Vietnamese destinations. one-time experience.

As people travel, they post online. Social For the industry itself, AI-focused start up media has become a constant companion to TasteWise takes this one step further as it those who eagerly upload every step, meal scans publicly available information such as and crumbling ruin that they come across. online recipes, menus and content from social It has also given rise to “influencers” who are media. Using machine learning, it then makes able to hold sway over their followers and predictions on consumer trends that help introduce new concepts and ideas to people restaurateurs determine the next big thing scattered all over the globe. and adjust their offerings accordingly.

As a result, restaurants and bars are realising Social media are inundated daily with millions this and working out how to harness the of uploaded food pictures and recipes, from best of data science to get the best from health and wellbeing influencers down to their customers—and give the best to them. the pedestrian consumer. These all indicate, quite starkly, what people are looking for in Everyone has their one favourite bar or their dining experiences and has very arguably restaurant that is active on social media. dictated how restaurants are now serving From posting mouth-watering dishes with their food.

“The camera eats first” is a common refrain when a group of diners sit down to eat— precious minutes are wasted and the dishes rapidly cool as consumers take the perfect shot of their meal and upload to social media. A well-known London café-bar chain, Grind, spent years reworking their menu to make it more photogenic, as well as upgrading their interiors. And with good reason, if an uploaded social media photo of your restaurant is the first impression your potential customers will see, hadn’t it better be a good one?

Most restaurants nowadays include ingredients that may not have even been known about a decade or so ago in the mainstream: bone marrow, pulled pork and Iberico ham are now chalked up on boards all over the world. For example, Tastewise gives a curious look into trending topics based on what people were searching for on the website. At the time of writing, the top three were mango chunks, Monterey cheese and brown rice noodles. How many of these would your grandparents have seen in their local deli?

Chapter 3 The new ordinary: Picking your favourite diet

With the advent of social media and other able to address the burgeoning global health measurable ways in which we can track problems caused by the change in our diets. how much we’re eating and when, does the new ordinary mean picking our favourite “The food industry has responded to science diet? To go back to Tastewise, the top five through product reformulation strategies. trending diets were vegan, vegetarian, clean For example, large-scale programmes of work eating, keto and gluten free. The keto diet— by decision-makers are ongoing to reduce possibly the diet of 2019—consists of high sodium in processed foods, reduce excess animal fat and protein intake with minimal intakes of sugar—particularly from sugar- carbohydrates. This could not be more sweetened beverages—and dietary fat. different to veganism, which is based entirely Despite the science not yet being ready for on plants. So why are they both seeing a translation to practice, a number of companies resurgence in advocates? Clearly, there is have also responded to ‘nutrigenomics’, or not one perfect diet for everyone. the idea that a DNA test can provide guidance for what foods you should eat.” From an evolutionary standpoint, as humans, we have a wider selection of genes, which But science has also given us healthier helps us experience a wider range of flavours alternatives to our meat-laden diets. Plant-based compared with some other vertebrates meat replacements such as Beyond Burger (though rats, for example, produce more). and Impossible Burger have become hugely Biologically, bitter, sweet, and umami flavours successful and popular due to their ability to are picked up by proteins on our taste buds.3 mimic meat and, in the case of Impossible Burger, even “bleed” when eaten, due to containing The more receptors we have for certain beetroot. In early trials of both products, flavours, the more motivated we are to eat or meat eaters had to concede that the burgers not eat certain foods. Our DNAs has developed managed to achieve a passably good texture over time, enabling us to enjoy more energy that resembled meat. Artifical meat grown in a dense food, which would keep us going in times laboratory by scientists wearing white gowns and of winter hardship, and also mean that we face masks might not sound that appealing, but it instinctively avoid herbs, leaves or plants that really can be considered a feat of engineering. could be poisonous. Ergo, the more receptors, Slow Food International, created in 1989 to the more motivated we are to eat or not eat preserve local and traditional food cultures certain food with certain flavours. and cooking methods, estimated that meat Nutritionally there is also no benefit from consumption could grow to 500m tonnes following any kind of restrictive diet and by 2050, a significant increase from 300m omitting any one source of energy, says tonnes in 2018, and certainly a huge jump Mr Power. Industry stakeholders have been from 45m tonnes in 1950.4

3 Evolution Accounts for Taste: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/140903_hummingbirds

Future Food Asia, Ms Decitre’s other project, with heirloom tomatoes (which have retained a large-scale food and agritech event the delicious sweet flavours of their that recognises Asia-based agriculture predecessors) by using GC-MS to identify which and food entrepreneurs, has in recent genes have been lost in the mists of time.5 years demonstrated that traditional Asian ingredients are now being looked at by As we enter the era of personalised the industry for their versatility in creating nutrition, our smarpthone apps can tell alt-meat substitutes. us exactly how much protein, fat and carbohydrates we’ve consumed, as well “Look at JUST [an early FoodTech pioneer], as vitamins and minerals. These can be it is indeed science that has helped highlight benchmarked against an imagined ideal the potential of the mung bean (who had for our weight, height and age, given to heard of mung beans in the West 15 years us by an algorithm. Science has also helped ago?) for its diversity in creating ice cream when it comes to understanding dietary which uses much less water and land, as disorders in children and the elderly, which well as butter which tastes just like the real can then be addressed before becoming a thing and can be used for scrambled eggs. bigger problem.

We see a lot of cross-pollinating potential “An understanding and description of taste between the East and the West, building preferences requires many different scientific on traditional recipes and deciphering discipline contributions including natural the biochemistry and physics of particular and life sciences, food sciences, behavioural food. Traditional Asian superfoods are sciences, nutritional sciences, human sciences, being analysed by science and repurposed social sciences, as well as the arts,” says in new food innovations.” Mr Power.

As science and technology continue to have “Our understanding of how taste preferences more influence on our now everyday diets, relate to sensitivity thresholds, learning, there will be certain victims that are at risk perception, genetics, nutritional deficiencies, of getting lost in the system. Take the humble emotion and early sensory experiences has tomato; when was the last time you tasted a also been advanced by science. What’s more, mass-produced one from the grocery store science has contributed to our understanding with the right flavour? They may look good, of taste preferences by unpicking the spherical, ripe, and a perfect shade of tomato development of taste preferences in children red, but they’ve lost the delicious flavour their and gustatory dysfunction in chronic disease ancestors had last century. Did yours actually and the elderly. taste of anything? AI is also opening consumers to [a] wider However, scientists at University of Florida selection of food and taste than ever before,” have managed to decode the genome of says Mr Lahousse. 400 different varieties of tomato compared

4 E Slow Food International: https://www.slowfood.com/foodforchange-our-meat-consumption-is-out-of-control/ 5 A Chemical Genetic Roadmap to Improved Tomato Flavour: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/391 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2019 The science of taste 13 Impact on the food and beverage industry of a better understanding of the human palate

“Food is and will be forever, cultural and food ingredients that have infrequently or personal. However, if we know you like a never been used in recipes before. There are certain Belgian beer, then you’ll like beers over 300,000 known pairings in the world. from around the world. And we can create KitcheNette quantifies pairings based on a highly personalised diet, depending on their flavour compounds and then rates them your individual preferences. based on how well its AI thinks they will match.

And by developing the technology, it can KitchenNette confirmed pairings we already be applied to everyone no matter where know of such as tomato and lettuce, onion they are. And AI can help people who don’t and minced beef, and pepper and oregano. have huge access to food—by informing us But it also came up with new, unconventional how to advise on the most nutritious and pairings: onion and cocoa, tomato and tea, and most economical way to produce food. pepper and orange were a few choice options. We can calculate what you should eat, not only rice or corn, for example, and vary your It also took three carbonated wines, diet. That’s the end goal of what we’re trying Champagne, a generic sparkling wine and to do,” he adds. Prosecco, which all subtly vary in their tastes, to see whether they could create new pairings. As mentioned at the beginning of this report, we understand that some traditional pairings The researchers admitted KitcheNette are here to stay. For example, we know that could do with improvements such as a the tannins found in red wine bond with wider database in order to recommend the fat in red meat, explaining why steak more versatile food ingredient pairings. pairs so well with it. However, some are However, it does raise an interesting question getting creative with their tasting menus about whether machines will eventually as our palates evolve, such as Claridge’s in be able to overtake the human brain in London offering a different tea matched choosing pairings that could work. with each course in its Michelin-starred Ms Decitre adds: “What is most interesting Fera restaurant—for example Cornish lamb, [about KitcheNette] is the capacity to both sweetbread, king oyster mushrooms and confirm the obvious but also predict the ramsons with a Japanese Hijiri Black Sun tea— score of new, less expected ingredient with the idea that tea and wine share many pairings. There is creativity in blending human characteristics such as tannins and and AI and, by working together, this opens fruit aromas. many more doors in how we could taste and But if we were to trust in machines, rather perceive food for the future.” than humans, to create our “perfect” diet with perfect pairings, whatever they may look like, would it differ from what we could choose ourselves?

Recently, researchers in South Korea created KitcheNette, which predicts the scores of unknown pairings consisting of

Conclusion

Today, data analytics and AI tell us about what we prefer and why. Our lifestyle and travel preferences also have an impact on our diet and what we choose to eat, and the choice ultimately remains with us. However, what we do not have control over, where our food comes from, and how it was fished, farmed or caught, is where science can help by giving us the reassurance of digitially tracking provenance.

By monitoring consumer preferences, companies are able to accurately meet consumer needs, thereby avoiding food waste. Moreover, it also allows for new and more innovative ways to sell products, while providing access to healthier foods and more balanced diets.

We, as a species, are still evolving. While we remain unconciously and genetically open to the five taste profiles of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savoury, our conscious palates, driven by consumer trends and external forces, have evolved to enjoy other flavours and pairings not known by our ancestors.

And in tandem, machines are working to develop new tastes and flavours that seek to mimic the choices we make ourselves. The next time you’re browsing the aisles of your local grocery store, that tasty- looking pasta sauce you sling in your basket may have been the product of the latest in AI working in harmony with the human brain.

While every effort has been taken to verify the accuracy of this information, The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this report or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in this report. The findings and views expressed in the report do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.

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