An interview with Professor Avraham Baniel and Eran Baniel from Doux Matok, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Professor Avraham Baniel and Eran Baniel from Doux Matok, the stars who have developed a platform of patented technologies making flavor-delivery more efficient, allowing for sugar-based sugar reduction with no aftertaste.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Eran: It was at the age of 90 that Prof. Avraham Baniel realized that an artificial sweetener he was contributing to was rejected by children, the most vulnerable population to overconsumption of sugar. His conclusion was that probably the only way to reduce sugar will be based on sugar. He remembered that during the 2nd WW, with sugar rationing in Palestine, children had a hard time concentrating in schools, an elementary school teacher asked him to get her some starch, so she can prepare a “pudding-like” viscous solution that with little sugar will provide the kids with an enhanced perception of sweetness they missed so much. Prof. Baniel was looking for a scientific approach that would explore “improving the delivery of sweet taste” to the receptors. He started to experiment in his kitchen and ended up with the first-ever targeted flavor delivery system for sugar.

In 2014, Prof. Baniel, at the age of 96, with 75 years of worldwide experience in industrial chemical research together with his son, Eran, incorporated DouxMatok, the first sugar-reduction solution based on sugar.

How is tech central to your business?

Avraham and Eran: We are a FoodTech R&D company that developed the first-ever improved flavor delivery platform of technologies. The majority of our team is made up of scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines such as material science, chemistry, and food technology.

DouxMatok has a very strong IP portfolio of 22 granted patents with 44 more pending and counting.

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Avraham and Eran:  With the population on the planet nearing 8 billion and with resources on the planet becoming scarce, innovation in FoodTech is the golden key.

Consumer demands are ever-changing; people are looking for great tastes, nutrition, convenience, health, and low environmental impact and those demands require creativity and advanced technological solutions.

Want to know more? See Doux Matok’s full profile here.

Congratulations again to Doux Matok for ranking 5th in the category “Food Processing” of the Foodtech 500 list!

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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