Blog post

Tuesday, May 17th

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May 3, 2016
The day started around 6:30 am. Most of the people arrived to the hostel’s restaurant around 7:00 am in order to take breakfast. We leaved the hostel sharply at 7:30 am. The trip was smooth and we arrived at 8:20 am at Nestlé. When we arrived at Nestlé we had a super nice welcome. We had several options for coffee, chocolates, bread, fruits and yogurt. A lot of the FPE members were really enthusiastic playing with the different machines to prepare coffee and thee. The spinning coffee machine was the most exiting of all the coffee machines available.
Tim Wooster started the presentations, he gave a nice introduction about what it is done in Nestlé Research Centre. Rob Bowling gave a nice talk about food safety and quality. Interesting questions regarding genetically modified organisms and nanotechnology were asked and nice discussions from an unusual point of view took place.
We had some tours where we ate chocolates without the use of our sense of smell. Two volunteer (Martin and Meinou) tried chocolate while their noses were connected to a PTR-MS, in order to monitor their perception. The other tour included the visit to the lab where reformulations took place. Topics as reduction of fat, sugar and salt were the most relevant topics. New products as porous sugar and salt attached to the bottom of the pizza crust were mentioned.
After the lab tours, we had the FPE presentations. Remko, Victor, Jun and Kelly were in charge of them. After the presentations we had a fancy and delicious lunch with: Salmon, beef, chicken, avocado, cheeses, salads, strawberries and much more were part of a nice meal that allows the interaction of us and some employees of Nestlé.
We left  the fancy Nestlé RC sharply at 1:00 pm, in order to arrive on time to our next visit. But as almost never happened during this trip, the GPS took us to another place.  We finally arrived around half an hour late (2:30 pm) to Firmenich
An interesting presentation about aromas and a nice video were presented by Helen and Igor. Again a lab tour took place, for this the group was divided in tree. The secret formula of Coca-Cola was revealed ;) for some of us. Other preformed a sensory test triangle, and another group was taken to the lab where an equipment which mimics the mastication was developed.
The  FPE presentations took place again. This time was the turn of Meinou, Marlies and Ali. Some Firmenich employees joined via Skype. For finalizing the visit, nice wine and snacks were served.
We leaved the company around 6:00 pm and after a nice and calm hour, we arrived to the hostel, where around 7:30 pm we took dinner.
Finalizing the day, a lot of us stayed in the lobby to keep online and other went outside to play table tennis or relax a little bit after dinner.