Mélanie Oullion-Simon
Mélanie wanted to be a doctor-nutritionist. Instead, this articulate 25-year old is revolutionising the way commandos snack. You may think snacking is trivial but the “don't eat between meals” recommendation doesn't hold for people undertaking strenuous physical jobs in harsh conditions: they need those extra calories!
Mélanie just failed to pass into the third year of her medical studies. “So I decided to concentrate on the nutritionist aspect because that aligned with my mission to help others.” Her two years of medical school enabled her to enter straight into the third and final year of a biological engineering technical diploma followed by the last year of a nutrition degree. She then did a Masters in nutrition and food science at AgroParisTech, a higher education and research institute in life, food and environmental sciences.
Mélanie’s book. The open pages show how much fibre is contained in the fruit listed in the left-hand column of the left page: passion fruit, goyava, raspberries… and grains and nuts on the right page.
Oh, and whilst studying for her Masters she wrote a book, the “Indispensable Guide to Nutrition”!
The obligatory internships in hospitals, clinics and pharmacies that were part of her studies made her resolve to be her own boss. So she applied for the 2018-19 one-year Masters in Entrepreneurship run jointly by two of France's leading higher education and research institutes: HEC (business) and Polytechnique (engineering).
Polytechnique is a military school so all those who attend spend time doing military training. “I've always really admired the military,” Mélanie tells me over a cup of coffee. “To me they're all super-heroes and amongst my teachers I had a submarine captain and a pilot of the Patrouille de France [the French Air Force's display team] and they sold me a dream.” Ever since then her mission has been to “better feed those who protect us.”
A one-term exchange with the University of California Berkeley allowed her to get “immediately embedded into the U.S. Air Force class!” Both the French and U.S. military students were intrigued by her background as a nutritionist so the talk turned naturally to their rations and what they felt was wrong with them.
“It became clear to me very quickly that the French soldiers really didn't like the 'combat bar' supplied to them as a calorie-booster whilst on missions [“they have a horrible after taste” she tells me] so instead they bought commercially available bars.” These, when tucked into soldiers' pockets or backpacks, get squashed, break into crumbs, melt, stick to the wrapping paper, and are generally messy and inconvenient to eat. They also don't do the job nutrition-wise.
The submarine captain at Polytechnique suggested she develop a combat snack “and I got the basic idea in one night,” she laughs. She developed various recipes in her mother's kitchen where new recipes are still being developed. The result is “military optimized superfoods” abbreviated to MOS which neatly also matches her own initials! After much discussion with her fellow students, and more recently with army, navy and air force commandos, she decided the snacks had to be round (smaller than a ping-pong ball but bigger than a large marble) in imitation of the human cell and planets. They also had to be entirely squashable, unbreakable and be pleasant to eat. The result are balls which do not make crumbs, do not melt, do not get hard in glacial conditions, and can even be eaten underwater by combat divers [believe me, I've seen the video!]. Oh, and they taste really nice [I've eaten one].
The snacks basically contain high calorie ingredients such as rice, nuts, dates, raisins and chocolate, combined with tea (for the theine). She has developed 10 different recipes “all sweet for the moment but I'm working on savoury ones, as well as drinks,” she explains, adding that she's also developing an edible wrapping.
Mélanie has been a one-woman enterprise (well, two-woman really because “my mother has been my biggest supporter”) until very recently when she hired a “helper” to help her roll the balls by hand. It was a job she was doing by herself, rolling several thousand a week, but demand has now outstripped supply so she's industrialising the process.
Her schedule is beginning to look like a government minister's. She's been invited to address the Tide Sprint NATO seminar in Sweden in the spring, will be at the special forces lab a few days before that, and in the summer will have a stand at the Eurosatory land and air-land show in Paris.
But Mélanie has never forgotten advice she got at UC Berkeley: think bigger. “One of my dreams is to feed the military,” she says and not just provide them with snacks. Tuck her name away in a corner of your mind. You'll be hearing a lot more about this young woman.
Mélanie Oullion-Simon, photo by Brian du Halgouet
““My mission is to better feed those who protect us””
