By Pip Osborne | Kaiārahi

A Taste of Innovation: I had one of the coolest days ever geeking out on Food Technology at Massey University in Palmerston North.

The day kicked off with a tour of the Food Pilot, home to the largest collection of pilot-scale food processing equipment in the southern hemisphere. Yep, you read that right. We rocked the white gumboots and hairnets like seasoned lab techs on a mission. All that was missing was a clipboard and some dramatic background music.  We were rewarded for our efforts with freeze-dried ice cream, which crunched like a meringue then melted into creamy magic on your tongue. Honestly, it was like eating space food, but the fancy kind.  This is where a lot of our ice cream flavours are invented!  Our tour guide (side hustle to his day job of being a food scientist) said his favourite invention was salted honey.

Next stop: the Feast Lab. And what a sensory trip that was. We sat down for morning tea, but this was no regular cuppa. Using multi-projector visuals and immersive soundscapes, the Feast team took our senses on a journey. One minute we were on Foxton Beach, the next we were in a marina café, and then suddenly we were in space. This space is designed to explore how environment affects food perception, and it definitely sparked ideas about how we can bring more sensory exploration into our classrooms. 

After that, we headed into the training room.  There were aroma jars, an EEG machine, and even eye-tracking tools, all used to explore how we respond to food experiences. There was a lot of discussion here about how this kind of tech and sensory science could be integrated into school programmes. The possibilities were endless, especially those who can get their hands on VR headsets.

But the afternoon sessions were my personal highlight. If you know me, you’ll know I love a good hands-on challenge.

The team at Massey led us through a clever spin on the design thinking process, viewed through a food science lens. We were given consumer profiles and had to empathise with their needs to come up with innovative food solutions. Our group got Katie, who loves flavoured drinks but needs to lower her blood pressure. One of the prompts asked us to create a “silly idea” to break us out of obvious solutions. The result? A weird and wonderful AM/PM two-sided drink with out-there flavour combos and blood pressure-friendly ingredients. (Prototypes are available—taking bids now if you want in on the next big thing.)

We wrapped up the day by scaling up the Edmonds pikelet recipe, from a batch of 10 to a factory-sized 100,000. It was a full-on, numeracy-rich challenge that had us measuring viscosity, tracking weight before and after cooking, and considering everything needed to run our own pikelet factory. This activity ticked every box: science, maths, design, and a bit of chaos (just the way we like it).

Big thanks to Dr Nicola Brown, Associate Professor, College of Sciences at Massey University for crafting the day and providing such valuable resources to our Food Technology teachers.  This was a true STEM event and as quoted by one of our attendees “It was one of the best PDs I have had”.  I second that.

We’re already counting down to Term 4 when we hope to do it all again. If you’re keen to be one of the lucky 30 people to experience this one-day, learning-rich, totally inspiring course sign up here: https://go.tenz.org.nz/foodtechday

More about A Taste of Innovation: Food Technology Teacher Day

• Food Pilot Tour: Explore the largest food processing plant in the southern hemisphere and learn how food products go from idea to pilot production.
• Feast Sensory Lab: Dive into triangle taste tests, sensory booths with lighting effects, and immersive café environments while you snack.
• Training Room: Experience eye-tracking tech, EEG machines, and aroma jars to see how our senses shape food experiences.
• Innovation Challenge: Use design thinking tools to create new food products tailored to consumer needs.

Pikelet Scaling: Take the humble Edmonds recipe and scale it up for mass production—maths, science, and food tech collide in the best way.