VOA科学技术2024--Chilean Company Uses AI to Reproduce Turtle Soup

Chilean food company NotCo has been working on a popular meal for people in Latin America and Asia: turtle soup.

The meal tastes like turtle soup but has no parts of the creature in it.

The company says it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create the food. It hopes to raise awareness¹ about the endangered reptile².

Bernardo Moltedo leads the science behind the effort for NotCo. He used the term impact - meaning an effect or change - to describe the effort.

Moltedo 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."

NotCo 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.

For 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.

With 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 texture³ to foods prepared with traditional animal-based ingredients.

Green 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 affected⁴ by pollution, extreme weather and fishing. The exploitation of these sea turtles is prohibited in most countries in the world.

However, turtle soup remains⁵ in high demand in countries throughout Asia and Latin America, including China, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia and others.

Words in This Story

endangered - adj. describes an animal or plant at risk of dying off completely

quintillion - n. a number equal to 1 followed by 18 zeros

combination - n. a resulting of mixing two or more things

texture - n. the way a food feels in your mouth

ingredient -- n. one of the things that are used to make a food,

1 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

2 reptile   

n.爬行动物；两栖动物

参考例句：

• The frog is not a true reptile.青蛙并非真正的爬行动物。
• So you should not be surprised to see someone keep a reptile as a pet.所以，你不必惊奇有人养了一只爬行动物作为宠物。

3 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

4 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

5 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。