Today I have to… I have MS

Putting your shoulders underneath; it is a credo of marathon runner Merel Rijnen. Despite the medical diagnosis of the autoimmune disease MS last year, she didn’t give up and got to work. The mental resilience is also a godsend for the snacks and confectionery industry. Numerous companies in our sector have been calling the food technologist and owner of Food Dynamics for years for help and advice. “I want to keep doing that. In addition, I am following a study to find out what else I have to offer.” Born and living in North Brabant, Merel Rijnen (43) tells her story.

“2022 Is an important year in several respects. I closed the door of my innovation lab on a business park in Dongen. Since then I have been working from home again. The dragee kettle, the oven and other machines have been sold. Practically speaking, I am back where I started, because ten years ago I started Food Dynamics from the attic room. But after a while, the entire attic room was overflowing with raw materials.”

Alone

“However, the corona period years later made something clear to me. What? I worked even more remotely, I was not allowed to visit companies as an external person, so I was working on my own all that time with only online contact. Is that what I still want, I wondered.”

Sum

“That question about my work and future took on a deeper meaning last year. I got an optic neuritis in 2022. What followed was a series of visits to doctors and specialists. To make a long story short: around the carnival period, the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was made. After all the examinations, epidural and scans, I was also relieved on the one hand. I know what’s going on, get meds for it and then we’ll move on, I thought. However, it turned out not to be that fast. It took quite a long time before my sight was back, after all the optic nerve was affected. It still is, there is permanent damage. I see more blurry on the right, although my left eye tries to compensate for this.”

Optic nerve

“I also see colors differently, and the information from my optic nerve to the brain is slower. Nevertheless, in September last year I ran a half marathon in Eindhoven. I feel good, but in December a new scan followed. The photo showed new spots or inflammation in the nerves of my brain. The conclusion is that MS is currently quite progressive. The sum or the reflection that followed the corona period and the diagnosis made me decide to trade my business space back for the attic room. And I made a different decision.”

Nutrition & dietetics

“I am positive. The shoulders underneath and go, keep going! This also includes the drive to develop myself further and to gather knowledge. More precisely, that is the relationship between nutrition and health. Because since September last year I’ve been following the part-time HBO course Nutrition & Dietetics. Once every two weeks I go to The Hague to attend classes.” “Thanks to this training and the gathering of new insights, I hope – I’m in the second half of my propaedeutic year – to fill in my job as a food technologist even more broadly. This includes providing better information about regulations, as well as explaining the relationship between nutrition, health and product development.”

“Food Dynamics’ product development has long focused on the sweet corner: candy, chocolate, biscuits and ice cream. This seems to be in contradiction with the dietetics training, where the emphasis is on health. Yet this relationship is less incongruous or contradictory than thought. Every person wants to enjoy full, delicious flavors at regular intervals. Logical, and we shouldn’t be too difficult about that. I am not in favor of all kinds of weird diet products and additives. My motto is simply to eat varied fruit and vegetables, and then there is really room to enjoy all the goodies from the sweet world every now and then.”

Bring something new

“I now have a good network within the snack and confectionery sector, although I started small of course. During the economic crisis a few years before 2010, companies cut costs. Less money was made available for permanent employees, including within the research and research department. Oh dear, there goes my future as an independent entrepreneur and food technologist, I thought.”

“It turned out differently. Although companies cut back on fixed costs, they also increasingly called on external knowledge. They switched to someone who comes in every now and then, brings new ideas and then goes out again. Then the economy bounced back. I thought the same as before: the industry is looking for permanent employees and then I’m sidelined. I was next to it. R&D departments within companies usually work together for quite a long time, but this creates a kind of tunnel vision. This line produces product X, so anything else is not possible, that’s how you could summarize that vision.”

“Moreover, there were quite a few projects for which I used the kitchen. The potatoes were also peeled there in the evening. An unworkable combination. It’s getting too hot, my husband also said. So I decided to move to the business space and started an innovation lab. One of the first investments was a dragee kettle, a great machine. I also bought stainless steel tables, scales and a baker’s oven, among other things. In short, a complete outfit.”

Fresh view

“It turned out that even in that period of economic prosperity, I was asked to take a fresh look at production and the possibilities, or to contribute to out-of-the-box thinking. In short, I haven’t sat still for a day since the start of Food Dynamics. There was always plenty of work. Moreover, there is a lot of room for creativity in the sweet sector. Think of the combination of salt and caramel, or the combination of licorice and chocolate, just like certain spices in breakfast cereals and the cross-use of production techniques. The enthusiasm to apply techniques and ingredients from other food categories makes the snack and confectionery world particularly interesting.”

Waste streams

“For me, product development is a discipline that goes from A to Z. So supplying raw materials, drawing up a recipe, scaling up in the factory and then making production more efficient, such as preventing breakage and solving questions about the machine park and dealing with waste streams. For example, I’m currently working with a chocolate factory – I won’t name it – to prevent waste. It is necessary for this to regularly sit down with machine suppliers to find out how we can scale up the production of a food item.”

Hard nougat

“Of course, one customer’s question is not the same as the other. Sometimes the solution takes quite some time, other times the answer is found more quickly. I was once asked to help think about softening hard nougat. The company itself did not manage that well. The director called me: could I come over? I said: email me the recipe and I’ll look at it first. After an analysis of the recipe, I told them that they had to adjust some raw materials and the ratio within them. They then did another test. With result: the company was suddenly able to make high-quality soft nougat. This quick solution is a result of knowledge and experience. As a result, I can see more quickly which raw materials are necessary and in what proportion. I can sometimes come up with a solution within a day or half a day. It is therefore not the case that a collaboration always lasts for weeks.”

“Rijnen studied food technology at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences. After her studies, she started working as an R&D and account manager at Choco Support. After a year, she made the transition to R&D manager at Kerry Ingredients. After about seven years she decided to start her own business and started her company Food Dynamics in 2012. The clientele mainly consists of companies from the snack and confectionery industry, such as Felko, Jules Destrooper, De Kroes, Delicia, Pally, Tony’s Chocolonely, Merba, Menken Orlando and Van Vliet, to name a few. Rijnen also works with machine suppliers, such as with Henk Koenen and Tanis.”

Oreo-cookie

“Secrecy is self-evident. If there are companies that come up with contracts, then that is no problem at all. Moreover, I do not mention the projects on my website, but there are names of organizations with which I collaborate. Sometimes it concerns large companies with an existing R&D department that I maintain contacts with. One of my roles is to contribute out-of-the-box ideas.”

“If it concerns an A-brand producer, then it usually revolves around new products or innovations. Think of Tony’s Chocolonely that regularly launches surprising chocolate flavours. Tony’s is very good at coming up with new flavors and the marketing around them, but the company sometimes needs a little extra help technologically, if I may say so. That is why I sometimes help Tony’s to deploy new technologies that fit within the brand.”

Stuffed apple pies

In twenty years of Food Dynamics, Merel Rijnen often encountered the same questions from the snacks and confectionery industry. Less sugar, natural dyes, no e-numbers. “How do I make a product cheaper? No, that question only came up once. These were filled apple pies that were at the bottom of the shelf and were already quite cheap and undressed anyway. My advice at the time: take your loss on those filled apple pies, but also offer a new product that we will develop together and where more margin can be achieved. So we started producing something else on the line of filled apple pies to compensate for the loss of that item.”

“Private label producers are also part of my network. The assignments include copying a successful A-brand product for which the primary demand usually comes from the retail sector. A good example is the Oreo cookie. You can already calculate a lot from the ingredients list and the nutritional values, but you cannot find out which type of aroma has been used. With a butter flavor you can choose from up to fifty varieties. Which exactly was used cannot be determined, just like the dosage. The challenge is therefore to imitate the A brand taste together with the customer. The same goes for the texture. Which ingredient is precisely what determines that one texture? The oven time, oven temperature, kneading times, type of glucose, type of flour and so on also play a role. Those variables can lead to just that one difference between the A brand and a private label.”
Knowledge

“Has the level of knowledge about product development among my customers in the snack and confectionery industry declined in recent years? Well that’s… hard to say. I do not think so. It is characteristic that companies often think internally, and are allowed to peer over the fence more often. A development in recent years is that the number of food technology students is decreasing. There is a shortage. What you see is that companies are therefore hiring bakers and cooks, because they naturally also have knowledge and opinions about taste. I regularly talk to bakers, chocolatiers and chefs, not just food technologists. In addition, there are also line operators at a company who grow into the product development profession. The moment such an employee leaves with that specific knowledge, the company is faced with a problem and expertise is lost. And even then, I come into the picture. Food Dynamics can therefore continue to serve the snacks and confectionery industry for some time to come.”

Bear biscuits

The vlog on the website about the florentines makes it particularly clear what Merel Rijnen’s contribution can be. Or rather: it’s versatility. How about that? A Belgian customer asked her to come and see the bear biscuits being made in the factory. The acrylamide levels were too high.
Could Rijnen help think about a solution? In addition, there were too many breaks in the product, the necks of the bears broke off too quickly. “Once in the factory, I wanted to see the other lines. I am curious by nature. Then I saw the line of the florentines and wanted to take a closer look. “Yes, yes…, we’re here for the bear cookies, so those florentines will come,” was the response. “That’s fine, but if there’s time left, I’d like to take a look. I saw something strange there,” I replied. Well, finally there was time left and I walked to the florentines line. I said: ‘You can put half of that line with the old iron. What you are doing now is a detour from the production of the florentines.” They didn’t believe that, so they came to my innovation lab in Dongen to find out how that technology could be different, without the front end of the line The delegation was quickly convinced. The adjustment of the line was realized within a day. The efficiency of the line improved, as did the quality of the biscuits. So not only product development, but also improving production is a skill that I have acquired over the years,” says Merel Rijnen. “Packaging? I also do that on request. Is there enough space for a banderole, does it have to be maintained? I also delve into such questions. Packaging design is not a specialty of mine, but it is, for example, the link between production and the packaging process.”
“The enthusiasm to apply techniques and ingredients from other food categories makes the snack and confectionery world particularly interesting.”