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 awareness about the endangered reptile.

Bernardo Moltedo, scientist in the IA area of the plant-based food company NotCo, selects spices used for their recreated veggie-based turtle soup, developed with AI at the NotCo kitchen-laboratory, in Santiago, Chile, April 19, 2024. (REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado)

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

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

I'm John Russell.

Juan Casas reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English.

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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,