Here’s a conundrum: many think Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, is a little dull. It grows a bit every year, rarely makes a false move and prides itself on doing much the same with rigorous efficiency all the time.

Then there are others who see it as an evil empire, and boycott it. Paul Bulcke, Nestlé’s latest boss, cuts me short right there.

“Ach, you are from Englund,” he says in his Flemish-accented English. “It is less of a problem in America.” And in the developing world, he adds, the company is welcomed for the health and nutrition it provides, and the jobs it brings.

So why do some still have doubts? He shrugs. “I am with this company because I love this company and how it goes about its business. We do what we do because we are convinced it is right.”

Bulcke, 54, Belgian by birth but Nestlé to the core, offers a small smile. He’s invited me to lunch high in his sweep of modernist offices overlooking Lake Geneva in Vevey. He keeps his jacket on while I take mine off. It’s that kind of place.

Inside Nestlé, everything has its order. Bulcke unwinds by racing his 1100cc motorbike over mountain roads on a Sunday morning, but in the office, he’s as tightly drawn as a snare drum. Likewise, his business wants to be loved, but can’t quite loosen itself up enough to dispel the doubts. “Being Swiss means we do business with our own conviction and principles, and then we shut up, and sometimes that’s the problem,” he nods.

Outside, as Bulcke speaks, yachts scud across Lake Geneva, while beneath his windows, affluent Swiss promenade into Vevey. The elegant resort town, an hour north of Geneva by train, seems an odd base for so vast a business. But it was here that Heinrich Nestlé, a Lutheran German pharmacist, first invented his revolutionary infant cereal in 1867, and it’s here that the firm has kept its HQ ever since.

These days Nestlé, Switzerland’s biggest industrial company, has 283,000 employees and 456 factories worldwide, producing baby formula, breakfast cereals, coffee, chocolate, mineral water, pet foods, ready meals, dessert ingredients and more. In Britain its brands include Nescafé, Nespresso, Kit Kat, Quality Street, Perrier, San Pellegrino, Cheerios, Shreddies, Purina and Carnation. And right now, adds Bulcke proudly, Nestlé sells into every country in the world — including North Korea.

That power can be a force for good, or not, depending on where you stand. In particular, the company has suffered continued criticism for its marketing of baby formula to Third World mothers as an alternative to breast-feeding.

Film star George Clooney, who appears in Nestlé’s Nespresso ads, has even been drawn into the debate. In the past, Nestlé has tended to ignore protesters. More recently it has been embroiled in a court case in Switzerland, accused of hiring Securitas, the security firm, to put spies into anti-Nestlé campaign groups.

Did it? “I can’t discuss that,” says Bulcke, “it’s a legal case.” But he does admit that Nestlé, respected for its research and marketing prowess, has not handled criticisms well, preferring to retreat into its own certainties — the Swiss approach. “I am not going to judge what has happened in the past, but I don’t like the results,” he says carefully.

He hints that the style may be changing. “One of the targets I put when I defined our vision was to be trusted by all stakeholders. I don’t say ‘loved’, that’s stupid, but trusted. That’s a start.”