2023-08-21 18:00:00
In the belly of the industrial beast, 150 hectares in one piece in Lestrem, near Béthune, is digested day following day a number of tests and recipes to improve the food sold by 3,500 agro-industrial customers finally bought on the shelves of large surfaces, still more than 80% of French food consumption. It is posed: Rocket is increasingly a strategic partner for producers of processed foods, the consumer, in addition to taste, demanding quality – with their eyes fixed on nutriscores of all kinds.
We are at Roquette, so everything starts from wheat, corn, pea or potato starch to deliver carbohydrates, sources of energy for the body, with plants also delivering alternative proteins to those of meat. Tendency ! And under these conditions, the family multinational aims to surf on the explosion of the market for plant ingredients, most of which are invisible to the consumer.
The starched hive
In Lestrem, more than 200 researchers (300 worldwide), food technicians and nutritionists are active in a dedicated innovation center inaugurated at the beginning of June for 4.5 million euros of investment. We go from room to room, from lab to lab, for tests in semi-industrial conditions. ” Starch is the best texturizer in the world. Giants like Nestlé or Danone have their own labs of course, but Roquette is known in particular for reducing sugar in food. Says Pascal Leroy, vice-president of the ingredients division, citing the invention of the first sugar-free chewing gum 40 years ago, replaced by vegetable fibres.
Thanks to their transformation, the Crackers are more crunchy, the burgers, more juicy, the muffins less sweet by a good third thanks to the soluble fiber of the wheat (a sweet taste without having the calories). The Asian agro-industrial customer wants really crunchy crisps, this is less the case in Europe. The chips must not break in the packets, must remain crunchy thanks to more or less starch, depending on the country, culture, food tradition. Roquette works on the crystallization of ice cream, on vegetable cheeses, on the size of the bubble of cola soda (that of Coca-Cola is different from that of PepsiCola and the size of the bubble influences the taste), on the breading of cordons bleus in fryers, on jelly candies, more or less elastic, firm, gelatinous…, fibrous.
Here, we serve milk chocolate without milk thanks to pea proteins. Again here, we produce maltodextrin, a source of energy for babies: Roquette is used in 18 billion baby bottles per year, 30% of the world market.
We will leave the factory with the impression of a little dizziness. Because do we know what we really eat? A showcase is offered to the visitor in the reception hall. On display are, among others, ketchup sauces, Maggi béchamel, Ben&Jerry ice cream, Royco soup, Leclerc nuggets, Nova yogurts, Poulain chocolate, Mentos sweets, Tropicana juice, Carrefour biscuits… Plant fibers come into play everywhere. game to try a better diet. Passing through laboratories.
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