The woman who combines science and nature in the kitchen

Ronit Soglowek, one of the leading food technologists in Israel, grew up on her grandmother's cooking and dreamed of the day when, with the help of technology, she would be able to provide homemakers with prepared food with no preservatives. After leading the meat substitute revolution with the Wonders of Nature brand, she is conquering the market with the Madam Perez brand of chilled all-naturall dishes.

Why did you choose the food industry?

My mother had an opposite approach to what was the norm. She was ahead of her time. She introduced health, a balanced diet, and common sense into her kitchen. When I was a little girl, I remember that she sprouted alfalfa. She used miso and other healthy ingredients, and today we understand how wise that was. My mother told me that despite the popular recommendations at the time, she gave me half the amount of sugar because she understood that it was not a healthful additive. That is probably what brought me to specialize in food. I’m a food technologist. I studied biochemistry and food science at the Hebrew University and combined the two worlds: the desire to express love through food and to advocate balanced nutrition, health, and everything related to the nutritional components of the food we eat. I have been involved in this field for almost 30 years. That is the reason for the choices I made. I studied biology in high school. I was always attracted to the world of life sciences, but it was important to me to have a profession. I studied food technology with the view that the world is growing, and food will always be an engine of growth.

What has been your main occupation?

Building and developing brands for the leading food chains in Israel. Four years ago I married Eli Soglowek and joined his Soglowek company. We were a couple, but we didn’t work together, as I had concerns about combining a relationship with a professional life. In 2020 there was a boom in the meat substitutes category. There were many IPOs, and Eli offered me the position to manage a start-up of meat substitutes. It was an offer that was hard to refuse. It excited and interested me. The advantage of building such a start-up is, on the one hand, Soglowek was a food company with a 100-year tradition. The start-up we established gave us another channel of innovation and the opportunity to work at a different pace. We absorbed into the company engineers and technologists who specialize in the field of plant proteins and established the company's development and innovation division. On that platform, we established a laboratory that enabled us to enter the new field of developing chilled ready meals groundbreaking technology, such as cooking with steam without preservatives. Vacuum packing, a patent-protected technology that we have exclusivity for eight years in the local market. The project combines love and passion for food. We see it as a way to change the consumption habits of the Israeli consumer to eat home-cooked meals.

What is the advantage of technology?

Technology makes home-cooked meals accessible to us that beforehand could only be prepared for hours at home or eaten in a restaurant. We simplify the technology and make it possible to bring homemade recipes home. The journey I went through, led me to maximize my experience and abilities to this project, which is very complex. The development was done over two years. It involves taking a dish that is easy to prepare at home and transferring it to a robot line that prepares it without human contact. We had to translate our cooking actions in the kitchen into the language of the robot that creates the dish, weighs the raw ingredients, and cooks it for seven minutes. This preserves the nutritional values, the taste, the color, and the texture of the food. The result is not tasted at the time. The whole process takes place in a closed tray. Only after 24 hours does the dish balance out and you can see the result. It takes a long time to teach a robot to produce in an automated line. We have a chef who is in charge of tasting the sauces. If it's a bolognese sauce, for example, the flavor is there as soon as it is combined with the pasta. Every morning, the team of technologists checks what the line produced the day before. There is no such technology anywhere else in the world. Soglowek's capabilities as a veteran factory is to combine the two worlds, the new and the old.

What is your dream?

To be a leader in this technology and change the eating habits of the Israeli consumer. A second dream is to break into the international markets with chilled ready meals together with our knowledge in the field of meat substitutes and the combination of prepared meals without animal meat. In the end, the dreams translate into strategy. I want to continue to innovate. We launched the dinner series with shredded meat for the first time in Israel. We brought chilled ready to eat noodles, as a complement to the Madam Perez series. You only need to stir it for a few minutes to get a restaurant-quality dish. I want to constantly excite, create interest in the category, and produce. The next step is my grandmother's Moroccan fish balls. To make them at home is quite a lot of work. Another dream is to continue with the third series of personal dishes by Madam Perez, a holistic solution. You put it in the microwave for four minutes, and that's it. We started marketing it online with Walt Yango Deli, AM PM Contemporary and will enter more marketing networks.

This article is taken from The Jerusalem Post Women Magazine 2024. To read the entire magazine, click here.