I worked for Google at the time they went through the cookie iterations in the cafes. Personally I disliked all the cookies that ever came out of this project, mainly because they contained spices, I heard the same thing from many others.

After you got handed a cookie you were asked to fill out a feedback form on a tablet, which almost always is annoying.

But more importantly, the process of optimizing the ingredients left out many parts of what makes food enjoyable, temperature and texture for example.

I know this was meant to be a fun showcase of ML but to me this is still my favourite example of explaining misuse of ML technology where a simpler statistical model supported by expert opinion would have outperformed the taste of the cookies. Eg, any cookie expert might know that the number of people who like spicy cookies is only a small subset of all cookie lovers.