“You can use very little water over vegetables and it’s a quarter of the amount of salt you would normally use,” he said, pointing at official advice for people to reduce their average intake of sodium.

Precision is often the watchword, like the crunchy black pearls of balsamic vinegar, made by a eastern French firm Coolkal, which promise to deliver the same, tiny dose with each bite.

Or the smooth round balls called “Wikicells”, billed as edible food packaging and developed jointly by a French-American chemist, David Edwards, and the French industrial designer Francois Azambourg.

“As for an apple, we use the skin to deliver flavour, proteins, nutrients,” packing the cherry-sized bites with yoghurt, cheese, or ice cream, he said.

“It can be a chocolate wrap, or coconut, green tea and mint, vanilla, granola,” the sky is the limit, he said.

What all these food firms have in common is their insistence on the quality of their raw ingredients — natural, free of artificial colourings — their ethical sourcing and sustainable production methods.

In that spirit, an assortment of nougat- or liquorice-flavoured “bonbon coulis” are made from pure fruit and sugar, as are a line of flavoured, spreadable honeys, from raspberry to hazelnut.

Though artificial “E” numbers may have been chased out of the game, there is still room for fun, like with an aerosol can of chocolate mousse, which drew some amused, if doubtful smiles.

But the bottom line, said Terlet, is that one in two food innovations fails in the market: “Fifty percent of all investments in the agri-business are made at a loss.”