Food science undergraduate Leann Barden was featured in a UW-Madison news story. Leann performed research in Rich Hartel’s group on beverages suitable for people diagnosed with dysphagia, a swallowing disorder that affects nearly 18 million adults and children and is currently the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Leann was president of the Food Science club and will be joining Allen Foegeding’s group at North Carolina State University this fall for graduate studies.

Rich Hartel and the candy making short course were featured in a front-page article in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Good news from the recent ADSA meeting. UW-Madison had a clean sweep of the top three positions in the Graduate Student Oral Competition. Out of the 10 students selected as finalists, Eileen Salim from Lucey’s group came in first, Mateo Budinich from Steele’s group was second and Beth Briczinski (our recently hired lecturer) was third. Beth was presenting work from her recently completed PhD at Penn State. They came out on top although there was stiff competition from students from North Carolina State University, South Dakota, Ohio State, and Utah State U. Eileen’s presentation was on "The Effect of different types of emulsifiers on the functional properties of low-fat process cheese," Mateo’s topic was "Growth substrates for non starter lactic acid bacteria. Biochemistry and transcriptional profile of Lactobacillus casei ATCC 334 in a Cheddar cheese model system" and Beth presented on "Transport of glucose by Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis occurs via facilitated diffusion." There were many other excellent oral presentations and posters from UW students at the meeting. Congratulations to all the students that presented at this meeting.

The Food Science department was again involved in Grandparents University for 2008. Instructors included: Barbara Ingham, Beth Button, Beth Briczinski, Scott Rankin and Lee Jensen. Activities included: learning how ice cream is made and how to invent a new flavor, determining how different fat contents in milk affect Mozzarella cheese, how to test for antioxidants in various foods, and discovering how microbes affect our food.

Over 48% of the winners in last week’s American Cheese Society contest were graduates of one of the Food Science department’s dairy manufacturing short courses. This is a significant increase over last year when 38% of the winners were graduates. Wisconsin had 31% of the winners this year while California, Vermont, Canada and Texas had 16, 11, 7, and 6% of the winners, respectively. It is truly exciting to see the improved quality of the ACS contest and to see that our short courses have been a major part of that improvement.

Professor Michael Pariza was featured in a UW news article on conjugated linoleic acid. Conjugated linoleic acid, CLA, has been approved by the FDA as a new GRAS ingredient (i.e. generally recognized as safe). Mike Pariza has worked on CLA since the 1970s and he is recognized internationally as a CLA expert. Mike Pariza also holds many patents on the technology for CLA production. GRAS approval will facilitate the use of CLA in many foods as it has primarily been used in the supplement industry up to now.

The annual Food Science faculty/staff retreat was held on June 6th. The main focus was on reviewing the new Introductory Food Science & Technology (FS301) course offered for the first time this spring and how this fits into our curriculum.

Babcock Hall Dairy Plant master cheese maker Gary Grossen and his wife Corie will be honored as the Green County (WI) Cheese Days King and Queen this summer. Gary has won numerous awards for his Gouda Cheese, most recently at the World Cheese Championship held at Monona Terrace in Madison in March of this year. Cheese Days is a biannual event started in 1914 and takes place in Monroe, WI, the self-proclaimed Swiss Cheese Capital of the USA.

Work by Damodaran’s group on antifreeze proteins was featured in Grow magazine, Summer 2008 edition. His group discovered a cocktail of gelatin peptides that slows the growth of ice crystals, which form when frozen foods are exposed to temperature fluctuations. This is a major problem with ice cream. Gelatin is a widely used protein in the food industry and is used to make the dessert Jell-O.™

The Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker program was featured in Grow magazine, Summer 2008 edition. This program, which is unique in the US, is jointly operated by the Department of Food Science, Center for Dairy Research, Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Since 1994, 50 Wisconsin cheesemakers have graduated from the program. This program provides training on the science of cheesemaking to experienced cheesemakers (limited to cheesemakers with 10 years of experience) who must take a series of short courses at the university. In addition, the particular cheese variety that they are an expert in is graded by experts. This program has helped graduates of the UW food science short courses win 65 percent of the prizes at the 2007 US cheese championships.

The departmental wine and cheese social was held on Thursday, May 8th. Sarah Botham kicked off the night with a short lesson to teach us the art of pairing wines and cheeses. She has graciously donated a few bottles of her family’s wine from the Botham winery for this event. The Food Science Club supplied non-alcoholic beverages and most of the wine, and the Babcock Dairy Store, once again, donated renowned Babcock cheeses for this annual event.

Our new Academic Department Manger, Mary Anne Clarke, started work in the Department of Food Science. Mary Anne takes over from Tom Blattner who has retired.

Rich Hartel was given the 2008 WALSAA Outstanding Advising Award at the annual CALS awards program on April 23, 2008 in the Ebling Symposium Center, Microbial Sciences Building. This award recognizes the outstanding work Rich has done with our undergraduate students.

The popular game show Jeopardy! was on campus and episodes for the show were taped at the Kohl Center Thursday. Two Wisconsin natives competed in the Jeopardy! College championship. The Babcock Hall Dairy Store was filmed and featured in the show along with some other places from the campus.

On Monday, March 31st, the Food Science Club held its 3rd Annual Beer and Chocolate pairing, which was hosted by UW alums Jim Javenkoski (Unibroue) and Gail Ambrosius (Gail Ambrosius chocolates). Gail’s handmade truffles were also available to all who attended.

Cheese flavor work by Scott Rankin’s group was featured in Grow magazine, Winter 2007 edition. In the KnowHow section, they described how to study the flavor of cheese, including how to extract, separate, identify, and sniff compounds in order to identify the culprits for off-flavors.

Mark Etzel’s work on the milk protein glycomacropeptide (GMP) and researchers from the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research were featured in Grow magazine, Winter 2008 edition. GMP has no phenylanaline so it suitable for patients with phenylketonuria (PKU). PKU is a genetic disorder characterized by a deficiency in the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH). This enzyme is necessary to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine to the amino acid tyrosine. Left untreated, this condition can cause problems with brain development.