Food Science

Over 40 students and teachers from Verona high school visited the department on November 19th. They were given presentations about food chemistry, control of yogurt texture and the Babcock hall dairy plant by Beth Button, John Lucey and Tom Blattner.

The Food Science department was ranked number 1 in the nation in the 2007 Top Research Universities Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index issued by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The 2007 index compiles overall institutional rankings on 375 universities that offer the Ph.D. degree. Criteria used included percentage of faculty with a journal publication, number of journal publications per faculty, percentage of faculty with journal publication cited by another work and citations per faculty. Rutgers and U. of Mass. were ranked second and third, respectively.

Scott Rankin's research on cheese flavor from grass fed cows was featured in the inaugural issue of Grow magazine, from CALS. He found that cows fed grass or grass plus some grain gave better flavored cheese than cows fed just grains alone. This work could help specialty cheesemakers produce high quality flavored cheese from grass. Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese produced by Mike Gingrich has won many awards and the milk comes from grass-fed cows.

With the approach of Halloween, Rich Hartel was featured on the CALS news discussing candy. He also gave a talk on Wednesday, Oct. 31, in the "Wednesday Night @ the Lab" series titled "The Science of Halloween Candy: The Tricks in Making the Treats." The talk, sponsored by the UW-Madison Science Alliance, was held from 7-8:15 p.m. in Room 1360 Biotechnology Center, 425 Henry Mall.

Congratulations to Luis Jimenez-Maroto (graduate student of Dr. Rankin) who was the top individual graduate student butter and ice cream judge at the 86th Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest, held in Las Vegas on October 16. The UW-Madison team was coached by Drs. Bob Bradley and Scott Rankin.

UW Badgers team and farmers enjoy benefits of a new whey sports drink. The new beverage was formulated by KJ Burrington of the CDR and produced by the Babcock hall dairy plant. The drink is now being used by the UW football, basketball and hockey teams. The drink is consumed shortly after hard exercise and helps muscles recover. The drink contains whey proteins which have a high concentration of branched-chain amino acids. Muscles are able to rapidly absorb these type amino acids which helps muscle growth and promotes lean body mass. This story was featured in the September 19th issue of the Wisconsin Week.

Congratulations to UW student Hui Cai (PhD student) with Dr. Steele's group who won first place in the IFT Student Association Graduate Research Paper Competition. Her presentation was entitled “Genotypic and Phenotypic Characterization of Lactobacillus casei Isolated from Different Ecological Niches.” Congratulations to Priya Kathirvel (PhD student) in Dr. Richards's group who came third in that competition and her talk was entitled “Flavonol aglycone is a better inhibitor of lipid oxidation in muscle tissue than its glycoside: Possible mechanisms of inhibition.” Priya also took first place in the Muscle Foods Division competition at IFT.

The Food Science 2007 Product Development team took second place in the Institute of Food Technologists annual competition with their entry of Kudamushi Fruit Sushi. Team members are: Jennifer Baeten, Renee Lietha, Amy Jacobs, Jordan Gosz, Annaliese Eberle, Stephanie Pauk, Caroline Lynch, Katherine Elia, and Joshua Hambali.

Babcock Hall was host to Grandparents University and a number of faculty and staff including Barb Ingham, Yvonne Bushland, Lee Jensen and Scott Rankin helped out with sessions on food science topics such as pizza and ice cream.

Mercedes Brighenti won first place in the American Dairy Science Graduate student paper competition. Her presentation was entitled “Effect of different stabilizers on the textural and rheological properties of cream cheese.” Her advisor is Prof. Lucey. Two other graduate students from Lucey’s lab also presented at the ADSA meeting and they were Agnes Lee and Yan Peng.

The Food Science Newsletter is available.

The annual retreat was held on June 8th in the Madison west station. Part of the retreat program involved team teaching with a discussion with Kathy Sanders and the other time was spent on the new undergraduate curriculum.

On June 27th the History Channel broadcast Modern Marvels--Cheese. This program included interviews with Prof. Lucey as well as John Jaeggi and Dean Sommer from the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. The program tried to describe the history of cheese varieties as well as the scientific background to the manufacture and properties.

The annual Wine and Cheese Social was held on Thursday May 3 at 4:30 pm. Tom Blattner was voted faculty of the year by Food Science Club! The students really appreciate all he does for the club and various food science courses. He has always been willing to lend a helping hand and that really means a lot to all the students. Tom was honored at the social.

Research that aims to make it easier to serve local produce as classroom snacks was featured in the CALS news. Monica Theis was the lead on this grant which will try to find cost-effective ways for school food services to use locally grown produce.

Yvonne Bushland retired after nearly 40 years of service to the University and the Food Science department and in particular to the Dietetics program. For many years she lectured and had labs on the Nature of Food. Yvonne will be missed but she promised to come back to help with events such as the Grandparents University.

PhD graduate students and several faculty members from Wageningen University, the Netherlands visited Babcock hall on April 23rd. This group was on a study trip to the US and visited several universities. In an all day event students from UW-Madison and Wageningen U. made presentations on their research, the visiting students also spent time in various lab groups and in the evening there was a social event with tacos and ice cream.

Rich Hartel received the 2007 Arthur Mauer Extra Mile award from CALS for his exceptional service to students. Congratulations to Rich on this award.

After an intensive search the new associate professor was announced during May and the department is pleased that Dr Veronika Somoza will be joining the department on December 1, 2007. Veronika is currently vice-director of the German Research Center for Food Chemistry. Her research area will be in nutraceuticals and functional foods and she brings a wealth of experience in this area.

The annual student vs faculty college bowl quiz was held on March 28. The student team was Joel Schroeter, Pete Weber, Katie Baures and Luis Jimenez-Maroto while the faculty was represented by Scott Rankin, John Lucey, Srinivasan Damodaran and Mark Richards. In a close contest the students won...

Food Science Club held a Chocolate Extravaganza on Thursday February 8 at 4:30 pm. Valentine’s Day was celebrated the way it was meant to be... with lots of chocolate covered treats.

The new undergraduate curriculum was approved by both the CALS curriculum and the divisional curriculum committees. The new courses and roadmaps will be rolled out this summer so that all new incoming freshmen from the summer of 2007 will be on this new curriculum.

Recent research conducted by the Food Science and Dairy Science departments at UW-Madison highlight that there are distinct flavor and color differences in cheese made from cows that are pasture fed compared with the typical ration-based (TMR) diet. Trials were conducted at the UW Arlington Agricultural Research Station and involved Dave Combs from Dairy Science as well as Scott Rankin and John Lucey from Food Science. This work was sponsored by the UW Center for Integrated Agriculture and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.