Non si vive di solo pane, è vero; ci vuole anche il companatico, e l’arte di renderlo più economico, più sapido, più sano, lo dico e lo sostengo, è vera arte. Riabilitiamo il senso del gusto e non vergogniamoci di soddisfarlo onestamente, ma il meglio che si può, come ella (Artusi) ce ne dà i precetti.
(Olindo Guerrini, 1896)
We don’t live by bread alone, that is true; we also need food, and the art of making it cheaper, tastier, healthier—I say and maintain—is true art. Let’s rehabilitate our sense of taste and not be ashamed to honestly satisfy it, but to the best of our ability, as she (Artusi) precepts.

Food and technology. Chef Robot and our cuisine

In the era of Artificial Intelligence, food and its preparation, which have long been rooted in our existence, are subjects of an epochal technological transformation. Until a decade ago, the cuisine was an exclusive domain of human creativity, with its rites, timing, and traditions; nowadays, it seems that artificial intelligence can change the modalities of researching, selecting, mixing, integrating, and preparing our meals. From the design of food processors to the definition of bespoke diets, from the monitoring of tastes and individual food preferences, artificial intelligence becomes the guide, if not the master, of our traditional chefs, with the ambition to take the place of our legendary grandmothers and their sacred culinary secrets. Before looking at some interesting studies and publications that have inspired me, it did not occur to me that AI could operate like a robot with an apron, ladles, big pots surrounded by smoke, vapour, and smells from the cooker. These readings have enhanced my curiosity, my desire to deepen my understanding of the matter, and to discover the positive contributions that come from the presence of a Chef Robot in the kitchen. Obvious questions arise: what happens to our relationship with food when technology enters a kitchen? How does the scientific precision of a Chef Robot adapt to the creative pleasure of the culinary preparation? Can it adapt to the creative pleasure processes? At last, what impact does it have on our connection with nourishment? We are talking about the home Chef Robot in every family kitchen, the ‘starred’ Chef Robot inside restaurants, or the Chef Robot machines adopted in big food industry production chains?

…The idea of ​​a robot chef was once confined to science fiction, but today it is increasingly a reality. Some large restaurant kitchens have already introduced robots like Flippy, a robotic assistant that prepares burgers with consistent precision, or Sally, a device capable of composing custom salads for customers. These robots are equipped with sensors, cameras, and advanced software that allow them to measure each ingredient, monitor cooking times, and guarantee maximum food safety…2

Consequently, we need to think that culinary art may transform into an exact science, where human error is minimized. Surely, for big food chains, the applications of artificial intelligence represent an opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs, but can the precision of robotic techniques be applied in domestic kitchens? Let’s think of a robot preparing breakfast for us or other meals we desire for the day. It could seem an innovation useful to reduce our labour, but can a robot take the place of human love and passion? At the basis of traditional cuisine, the methods and the techniques are not sufficient, as Maestro Artusi teaches us, these amalgamate to intuition and human sensitivity two dimensions on which human capacity is based on to find the rights taste to satisfy a momentary desire, or to invent a dish with the ingredients at hand, forgotten in a corner of the cupboard on a fridge shelf. What has defined, until today, the “best home or professional” Chef is the ability to improvise, change, experiment, and also transform an old recipe. A Robot operates because it is programmed with algorithmic precision, on the basis of standard information, obviously perfectible because Robots learn, but can inventiveness, intuition, human passion be codified, and transferred to a programmed machine with a chef’s hat, spoons, and pots?

To avoid prejudicial positions or consolidate preconceived opinions, one way is to research and verify the opportunities and limits of the culinary revolution, and to understand how artificial intelligence can reinvent our nutrition, particularly traditional processes, methods, and techniques used in its preparation. We cannot forget that if in the second industrial revolution the link between science and production was directed by brilliant artisans to reduce human labour, in the second half of the 19th century, innovations largely derived from scientists’ work. The cultural positivism movement was a consequence of scientific and productivity accomplishments, and, according to it, humanity, thanks to scientific progress, would achieve greater wealth and better living conditions.

Artificial Intelligence and personalized nourishment.

Making the effort to overcome the romantic vision of the kitchen and the art of cooking, hoping not to offend our master Artusi, let’s try to consider AI as an instrument to guide our nourishment. Artificial intelligence, through analysis and elaboration of personal data (gender, age, weight, physical activity rate, allergies, and genetic data), can define personalised diets thought to safeguard and promote our health.

The possibility to personalize nutrition represents a revolution compared to generic diets, often disastrous because they do not take into account individual characteristics. The adoption of artificial intelligence helps elaborate bespoke nutrition, introducing individualized food programmes to improve physical performance, mental health, and everyone’s wellbeing. Yet, this innovation raises ethical and practical questions. The extreme personalization could lead to eating being a purely mechanical process. Furthermore, a diet based on data and algorithms could negatively influence our relationship with AI, transforming it into a rigid, unspontaneous practice. The answer is simple: Artificial Intelligence can suggest food diets ad hoc, but the final decision, and the freedom of choice, belong to humankind.

De Gustibus and the algorithms of the palate

De gustibus non est disputandum (there is no accounting for tastes) said the Latins, and instead it seems that artificial intelligence plays the lord and the master also on our tastes and food preferences. Thanks to the data collected from our online profiles, shopping habits, and reviews we leave on websites and e-commerce platforms, sophisticated algorithms can understand what we like to eat and elaborate dishes and recipes to satisfy our specific tastes.
This opportunity for personalization manifests itself in various aspects of our digital behaviour: from recipe suggestions on Google to recommended dishes on social media. These algorithms are not only able to detect culinary likings, but also learn to predict our desires. An Artificial Intelligence system could suggest recipes with ingredients we have in the refrigerator, or propose combinations that might surprise us. How much room does this continuous, standardized adaptation of food to our preferences leave for discovery and improvisation? The kitchen has always been a place of research, experimentation, trial and error, and ingenuity. If everything is preordained and predicted, we risk losing that magical part of our diet, that unique ability to surprise us and lead our minds and senses to new flavours and combinations.

Creativity, intuition, and emotions in the new technological kitchen.

While artificial intelligence functions progress at supersonic speed, the essence of culinary art remains the same. As we have seen, the enjoyment of food is not the sole result of perfect flavour, or aesthetically impeccable composition, but also a sensory and emotional experience. Cooking is a way to express oneself, to relax, or even as therapy. AI, as sophisticated as it may be, can really substitute human pleasure for kneading, tasting, adjusting ingredients, or just improvising with the ingredients available?
Technology can certainly make meal preparation simpler, faster, and more precise, but the risk is losing the emotional connection we have with food. The act of cooking, in fact, is not just the end result—the dish to be enjoyed—but also the process, the time spent in the kitchen, the commitment and attention we put into small daily tasks. A dilemma, therefore, arises: how can we maintain the human essence of cooking in a world where everything seems to aim for supreme efficiency? Perhaps the answer is to maintain the right balance, where Artificial Intelligence does not replace but rather supports humans, helping with the most complex or repetitive tasks. Our starred and non-starred chefs, our mothers, and our grandmothers will have to learn the art of technological programming to educate little robots by transferring the information needed to select ingredients, mix, season, and cook them if necessary. In other words, they will have to learn to teach apprentice robots the art of cooking rather than practicing it.

Culinary Multiculturalism and Robotic Chefs

If we analyse this phenomenon from a cultural and anthropological perspective, we can dare to pit human and artificial intelligence against each other: the human being carries a deep understanding of culinary traditions, developed and passed down orally through generations. Food defines the cultural and social identity. Each culture has its proper iconic dishes that represent its history, geography, and values. Food practices reflect social relationships, rites of passage, and celebrations, with the food always at the centre of many traditions and festivities. Human creativity helps culinary innovation, the combination of ingredients in new ways, reinterpretation, and the cultural contamination of traditional dishes, too. AI applied to gastronomy can optimize kitchen food production processes, improving efficiency and reducing waste. Our Chef Robot and intelligent machines can automate repetitive and complex tasks. It can analyse large amounts of data to offer personalised recommendations, improve the ingredient quality, and ensure food safety.
The algorithms of AI can identify food tendencies and suggest new combinations of ingredients based on consumers’ preferences, and we will see that in the next paragraphs, but if we make an anthropological comparison between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, it is possible to highlight that human intelligence has the unique ability to understand, safeguard, and transmit the cultural meaning of food.
The cuisine involves all senses (taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing) and, besides traditions, history, and customs, requires intuition and sensitivity derived from diverse human experiences. Each dish tells a story and represents a community, an ethnicity. Human cuisine is, above all, intuitive, based on the diversity of several tastes, smells, touch, and abilities that AI is still trying to emulate. Artificial intelligence can create new recipes by analysing data, but it still lacks primarily the symbolic and cultural aspects of food processes and products.

Chef Robot and the food industry.

We need to acknowledge that artificial intelligence is revolutionising the food industry through the introduction of chef robots that respond to the need for the highest level of automation in food production and specifically monitor regulatory compliance for food safety, quality, and traceability. Recipe customization, fraud detection, and traceability are certainly positive and fundamental aspects that our robot chefs seem capable of guaranteeing us. In the food industry and food service, AI is contributing to the creation of standardized production flows finalised to the control and reduction of the human error. Commercial kitchens, for example, are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence to optimize food preparation, cooking, and storage processes. Automation of the food preparation process and the presence of progressively specialized robots will become more common in restaurants: robot chefs that can not only learn recipes, precisely adjust temperatures, and reduce waste, but can even ensure kitchen hygiene and cleanliness. The field of robotics related to artificial intelligence, known as intelligent robotics, aims to build intelligent robots capable of replacing humans in executing manual and repetitive tasks, offering human-level performance. It is expected that, in the near future, robot chefs capable of autonomously preparing food ordered via an app will be increasingly employed. According to the Restaurant Association Research and Knowledge Group5, the restaurant industry is also expected to change dramatically by 2030.

Food industries are committed to complying with food safety regulations and therefore use the tools artificial intelligence offers to control each stage of the process, to predict and monitor the entire product journey from its origin to the processing area, all the way to the end customer.
The systems based on artificial intelligence allow, during the production phase, not only the resolution of issues with products that do not meet their characteristics (such as weight) but also define the booking of goods for transportation, invoicing, and inventory management, thus avoiding the purchase of unnecessary foodstuffs and their spoilage. For finished goods storage, smart sensors monitor magazine conditions, including storage temperatures, and ensure food freshness, while predictive algorithms help prevent supply chain disruption.
Artificial intelligence and food marketing.
Artificial Intelligence is really useful to elaborate predictive models of consumption and food preferences. This would let restaurateurs develop menus that adapt to changing and evolving customer tastes.
Even the adoption by food industries of technologies based on algorithms, which help elaborate information useful for creating bespoke recipes, utterly personalized to the clients’ tastes, is an ever-growing trend. Through the collection of information, such as, for example, the organoleptic and satisfaction evaluations found in a specific geographical area or consumer sample, it is possible to design nutrient-enriched foods as a possible remedy for malnutrition in some areas of the planet, or even the creation of super foods, i.e., those foods that have beneficial properties for health. According to experts, more accurate mapping of tastes and aromas through technology will pave the way to the development of specific foods and recipes that offer healthier, more sustainable nutrition. The use of machine learning software enables increasingly precise identification of food consumer targets, their interests, geographical area of ​​origin, and eating habits.