Huel

The Miracle Berry 🫐 Turn sour into sweet: the miracle berry (Synsepalum dulcificum) temporarily alters taste perception without adding a single gram of sugar. The “miracle berry”, derived from Synsepalum dulcificum, is one of the most commercially intriguing botanical ingredients emerging in the functional food and supplement space, bringing us closer to Willy Wonka style ideas like flavour shifting foods, and redefining how we formulate taste. Native to West and Central Africa, this small red berry contains a glycoprotein called miraculin, which binds to taste receptors and temporarily transforms sour flavours into perceived sweetness, without chemically sweetening the food, opening up entirely new formulation possibilities. The effect typically lasts around 20-60 minutes. The miracle berry sits at the intersection of several major macro trends: ✨ Sugar reduction and reformulation pressure ✨ Clean label flavour innovation ✨ Behavioural nutrition and sensory design ✨ Functional snacking and experiential foods Current applications remain relatively niche, but interest is growing across several areas: 👉 Functional food and supplement brands exploring sugar free flavour experiences 👉 Nutraceutical developers investigating appetite modulation and taste change applications (e.g. chemotherapy related taste disturbances) 👉 Experimental foodservice concepts (e.g. “taste tripping” menus and sensory dining experiences) 👉 Ingredient innovators developing powders, lozenges, and oral delivery formats From a regulatory perspective, the miracle berry is classified as a novel food in multiple jurisdictions. In the UK and EU, dried Synsepalum dulcificum has been assessed under novel food frameworks for use in food supplements and functional applications, with regulators concluding it is safe under defined conditions of use. 👉 The assessment focuses on safety, intake levels, and nutritional impact, rather than health claims, with regulators noting its role as a taste modifier rather than a nutrient source. 👉 Globally, regulatory status varies: in some regions, it is available as a dietary ingredient or supplement, while in others, its use in mainstream food applications remains limited or emerging. This berry represents a potential shift towards perception based nutrition engineering, where sweetness is experienced rather than added, unlocking dynamic flavour design and a more “Willy Wonka”-style food future. If you need support with product formulation, sourcing unique ingredients, or regulatory and development guidance, Balkin Nutrition is happy to help. Balkin Nutrition | Science backed. Market ready. 🔗 www.balkinnutrition.com #FunctionalFood #FoodInnovation #Nutraceuticals #ProductDevelopment #FoodScience #IngredientInnovation #CleanLabel #SugarReduction #SensoryScience #Nutrition #FoodTech #BalkinNutrition

Huel Lite Vanilla Matcha has launched in the UK 💚🍵 Since starting at Huel, matcha has always been a flavour I’ve wanted to develop for RTD and the Lite range just made sense! I’m so proud of this product, achieving creamy, milky texture and authentic vanilla matcha on a high protein, low calorie, vegan base is not easy but we got there! Thankyou to Andri Neocleous (ANutr) as always for your continued support 💚 I can’t wait for people to get their hands on this and start enjoying 25g of protein with their matcha fix! 💚🍵

It's CRAP Talks 33 next week and I'm so excited to be heading back to our friends over at RVU , (who have also agreed to host us for the next few events). Thanks for hosting us again. We have our first two exciting speakers lined up: - Aya G. - "Building Products for Different Cultures" - Mark Palfreeman - "Gambling with Success: The Complexities Around Measurement in an Industry with Stellar Growth". A huge thanks to AB Tasty ( John Hughes ) who continue to be a rock of a partner to CRAP Talks . We also welcome our newest partner, Stape ( Marcin Pluskota ) who we're so excited to have because of how much they do to support communities. Finally, we welcome back Amplitude ( Angela van Bragt ) who were a long time sponsor over the years. We missed you. Lot's going on. Make sure you register to avoid missing out. We're nearly at capacity. Sign up link in comments. Parveen Downer , Daniel Perry-Reed , Edd Saunders .

Opus 4.7 vs GPT 5.5 Gaming Showdown 🕹️ Many of my childhood racing game memories revolve around two games, Destruction Derby and Micro Machines. So I jumped onto Claude Code and Codex to do an Opus 4.7 vs GPT 5.5 showdown, pitting two of the top-tier coding models against each other. Both received the same simple prompt: build a voxel-based 3D destruction derby game where the player races around a figure-of-eight track. Each then got three follow-up prompts for tweaks. Both models completed the task in under 30 minutes and the results were impressive from both. They produced a fun, playable mini-game. However, there were a few touches that gave GPT 5.5 the edge - reactive shadows as the cars drive around the track, and a more polished voxel environment that made the overall experience feel a little slicker. 🎮

Today is my 1 year anniversary at Huel . It's been an absolute rollercoaster of a year. Looking back I can honestly say that nothing has changed, and at the same time, everything has changed. Nothing has changed in that the people are still amazing, the product is incredible and I love the culture. And everything has changed in that we've got awesome new products, AI has taken over our lives, the landscape has changed and we've got a completely different set of challenges and opportunities. And I also heard something about Danone... can't remember exactly what it was haha. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better year. I don't know what the next 12 months will bring but I predict that once again, nothing will change and everything will change.

Scaling AI adoption through internal champions 😻 One thing that’s worked well for us in scaling AI adoption is building a network of AI champions across the business. We started with a central AI & Automation team owning the core pieces like tools, governance, training, and the first wave of use cases. With Infosec closely supporting the AI & Automation team on security, helping us enable adoption in the right way rather than slowing it down. But pretty quickly, we realised that to really scale adoption, we needed people embedded in teams who were curious, tech savvy, and genuinely interested in the space. We gave those people more hands-on support, more 1:1 time, and access to more tools and models. From there, they could help upskill their colleagues, solve problems closer to their team, and start spotting new opportunities for AI within their function. It’s been an effective model for us, and we’re constantly looking at how to take it further, including AI hackathons across those teams. It means adoption feels more natural, while the central team can spend more time on governance, broader training, and more complex cross-functional automation opportunities. I also used this as an excuse to try Claude Design to make a neat little animation. A few prompts later and I had my own custom animated gif. Starting to wonder if there’s anything Claude can’t do. 🤯

A fantastic opportunity to join the incredible Finance team of a global, onni-channel business for the next 12 months, looking after the accounting of stock and logistics. #Huel

GPT Image 2...impressive text rendering! 🤯 Yesterday, OpenAI launched its new image model, GPT Image 2. So I jumped onto Freepik to test it out and show some of the practical improvements it could bring for CPG brands, especially the leap in text rendering. I created three images using the same prompt and reference images of Daily Greens can, including the nutritional information on-pack. That is a lot of text, so it is not an easy task. GPT Image 2 nailed it. Crisp, clean, and pretty much perfect. 😻 In the video, you can see the jump from the previous model, GPT Image 1.5. Even compared with the previous gold standard, Nano Banana 2, it is a noticeable improvement (the difference is clear at the end of the video). Nano Banana 2 looks good from a distance, but up close the flaws become obvious, a bit like me. It feels like a big step forward and particularly useful for CPG brands, where accurate, crisp text rendering has always been a bit temperamental.

On Saturday I mentioned that I might start a community for parents who want to do fun STEM projects with their kids but don't know where to start. Well, I'm pleased to say that I'm going to go through with it and see what happens. Introducing "Byte-Sized Bots". Byte-Sized Bots is a community where parents can share ideas and get inspiration of fun and accessible ways to nerd out with their kids. If you want to join, I've put a link to the WhatsApp group in the comments with more places to come. This project has been born out of my own personal experience and joy of building and sharing fun robotics projects with Kyle (10) and Ryan (7). Please share/tag/join. See you there.