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    • The woman who combines science and nature in the kitchen – Israel News
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    The woman who combines science and nature in the kitchen – Israel News

    Harry Posted on

    Ronit Soglowek, one of Israel’s leading food technologists, grew up eating her grandmother’s cooking and dreamed of the day when, with the help of technology, she could offer housewives preservative-free ready-made meals. After pioneering the meat substitute revolution with her brand Wonders of Nature, she is conquering the market with refrigerated, all-natural meals with her brand Madam Perez.

    Why did you choose the food industry?

    My mother had the opposite approach to the norm. He was ahead of his time. He brought health, balanced nutrition and common sense to his kitchen. I remember him sprouting clover when I was a little girl. He used miso and other healthy ingredients, and today we realize how clever that was. My mother told me that she gave me half a candy bar because she realized that sugar was not a healthy additive, despite popular advice at the time. That’s probably what pushed me to specialize in cooking. I am a food technologist. I studied biochemistry and food science at Hebrew University and combined two worlds: the desire to express love through food and the desire to advocate balanced nutrition, health, and everything related to the nutritional components of the food we eat. I have been in this field for about 30 years. This is the reason for the elections I did it. I studied biology in high school. I have always been interested in the world of life sciences, but it was important for me to pursue a career. I studied food technology with the view that the world is growing and food will always be the engine of growth.

    What was your main profession?

    Creating and developing brands for Israel’s leading food chains. Four years ago, I married Eli Soglowek and joined his Soglowek company. We were a couple, but we couldn’t work together because I had concerns about combining a relationship with professional life. There was a boom in the meat substitutes category in 2020. There were a lot of IPOs and Eli offered me a position managing a meat substitute. It was an offer hard to refuse. It excited me and intrigued me. The advantage of establishing such a start-up was, on the one hand, that Soglowek was a food company with a 100-year tradition. The start-up we established gave us a new innovation channel and the opportunity to work at a different pace. We recruited engineers and technologists specialized in the field of plant proteins and established the company’s development and innovation department. On this platform, we have established a laboratory that has allowed us to enter the field of groundbreaking cold ready meal development, such as steam cooking without preservatives. Vacuum packaging is a patent-protected technology that we have been privileged in the local market for eight years. The project combines love and passion for food. We see this as a way to change the Israeli consumer’s home-cooked food consumption habits.

    What is the advantage of technology?

    Technology makes home-cooked meals accessible to us, which can be prepared hours in advance at home or eaten at a restaurant. We simplify technology and make it possible to bring homemade recipes home. The journey I have gone through has enabled me to maximize my experience and skills on this very complex project. Development took place over two years. It involves taking a meal that is easy to prepare at home and transferring it to a robotic line that prepares it without human contact. We needed to translate our cooking actions in the kitchen into the language of the robot, which created the meal, weighed the raw ingredients, and cooked it for seven minutes. In this way, the nutritional values, taste, color and texture of the food are preserved. The result cannot be tasted at that moment. The entire process takes place in a closed tray. Only after 24 hours, the balance of the food is achieved and you can see the result. It takes a long time to teach a robot to produce on an automated line. We have a chef responsible for tasting the sauces. For example, the flavor of bolognese sauce emerges as soon as it is combined with pasta. Every morning, the team of technology experts checks what the line produced the previous day. There is no such technology anywhere else in the world. Soglowek’s capacity as an experienced factory is to combine two worlds, new and old.

    What is your dream?

    To be a leader in this technology and change the eating habits of the Israeli consumer. Our second dream is to expand into international markets with cold ready meals combined with our knowledge in the field of meat substitutes and ready meal combinations that do not contain animal meat. Eventually dreams become strategies. I want to continue innovating. We launched the first minced meat dinner series in Israel. To complement the Madam Perez range, we have introduced chilled, ready-to-eat noodles. You only need to stir for a few minutes to get a restaurant-quality meal. I want to constantly create excitement, interest and production in the category. Next up is my grandmother’s Moroccan fish cakes. Making them at home is quite a lot of work. Another dream of ours is to continue with Madam Perez’s third personal cooking series, which is a holistic solution. You put it in the microwave for four minutes and that’s it. We have started online marketing with Walt Yango Deli, AM PM Contemporary and will be getting into more network marketing.

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



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