What Is Food Science?
Would your dream job be working with candy, chocolate, ice cream and other foods? But what, you might ask, is there left to do about the foods we eat and how can you make a living working on foods? How can you improve the flavor and taste of a chocolate bar or the creamy, smoothness of ice cream? Perhaps you already put together weird combinations of ingredients together to make unusual foods. Can you make a career out of playing with your food?
It is people trained as Food Scientists who play with your food. They play with food for many reasons, but primarily their job is to ensure a safe and nutritious food supply. From quality control to new product development, Food Scientists work to ensure that our food supply meets the needs and desires of consumers. There are always new opportunities and continuing issues that require the training obtained by a Food Scientist. For example, current issues range from the new opportunities and challenges posed by genetically-modified organisms to satisfying the consumer's demands about the latest nutritional craze. However, it is probably the continuing issue of food safety, and the related issues of food quality, that constitutes the main role of Food Scientists.
The discipline of Food Science has developed over the years as methods to preserve foods and ensure public safety began to develop. Hundred of years ago, the food system was much different than it is now. There were no supermarkets that stocked every item imaginable. People bought bulk staples like flour, grains and sugar in large quantities for preparation at home. The staples were supplemented by whatever people could grow (vegetables and fruit) or raise (cattle, sheep, chickens, etc.). People in the cities bought these products at Farmer's Markets, a tradition that continues today in many places. Most of the food was then prepared at home for consumption that day and whatever was left over simply spoiled (or was fed to the pets). When foods were no longer in season, it was difficult to find them. People didn't eat fresh fruit or vegetables in the winter time.
Actually, numerous methods for preserving foods have been developed throughout history. Probably one of the earliest was salting of meat. This allowed it to remain edible and in an unspoiled state for long times. By the way, salting works to prevent microbial contamination by controlling the water. Microorganisms need water (among other things) to grow and the salt effectively competes for that water and inhibits growth of microorganisms. Many other preservation techniques have been developed over the years as well--sun drying is used to preserve fruits and vegetables, and milk can be converted into cheese with an extended shelf life. However, it was during the Napoleonic era that people first formally developed techniques for preserving foods. In fact, the story goes that Napoleon offered a reward to anyone who could develop a method to preserve foods for use in the battle field. His goal was to have a ready food supply available to maintain his troops as they crossed the continent. This challenge was taken up by Nicholas Appert, who developed a method for preserving foods in glass jars--the start of what we call canning these days. Many consider Appert to be the founder of the field of Food Science, since food preservation is one of the main tasks of the Food Scientist. However, there is so much more that a Food Scientist must do these days.
One common misconception is that Food Scientists are cooks or chefs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. One need not be able to cook food and present it with a flair to be a qualified Food Scientist, although perhaps it helps to have that aesthetic understanding. A Food Scientist does much more and requires a much broader understanding of all the issues that go into harvesting raw materials, turning them into edible food products and then making sure the foods retain the highest quality and safety standards prior to consumption.
Food Science: An Applied Discipline
Food Science is a very applied field, one that requires in-depth knowledge in several disciplines. In fact, the earliest Food Scientists were typically people trained in other disciplines (chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, etc.) who turned their attention to foods. Arguably, microbiology is one of the most important discipline in the training of a Food Scientist since food safety is such a concern. The Food Scientist works to ensure that foods are safe and uncontaminated when they arrive at the consumer's table. However, every year there are reports of contaminated foods, from ice cream to fast-food hamburgers. These are serious issues--people can die if they eat food that is contaminated or improperly treated. It is the job of the Food Scientist to make sure that the food is safe for consumption and this is no easy task. In fact, this was one of the main developments of Appert, to ensure that no microorganisms contaminated the products within his jars. He did this by cooking the food and thereby destroying most of the microorganisms. There are many other ways these days to process foods to prevent microbial contamination, but all of them raise issues and concerns. In most cases, concerns about food safety are usually caused by human error, but there are also new bugs making their appearance that we need to address.
All food is simply a mix of various chemicals, put together in various ways to give certain physical and sensory (our perception) attributes. A colleague who works for a chocolate company once said that if you mixed together all the chemicals listed in the Merck Index (a very comprehensive list of chemicals), you would have something that looked and smelled a little like chocolate (but don't eat it!). His message was that chocolate is a complex mix of chemicals (which occur naturally in the cocoa bean) that interact to give the unique product we call chocolate. Thus, it is extremely important that Food Scientists have a solid background in chemistry. The chemical nature of foods is particularly important in controlling quality, from flavor to color, and appearance to texture. After a food raw material is harvested, natural chemical and enzymatic reactions (respiration) continue to occur and these reactions cause changes in the product. An orange picked while green can still ripen into an orange color (often with the help of an ethylene spray) while being transported to northern climates. Any fruit or vegetable will continue to change during storage, becoming soft and mushy over time, due to these respiration reactions. A Food Scientist must understand these chemical processes in order to control them. For example, storage of apples in modified atmospheres (removal of oxygen) and at refrigeration temperatures allows the apples to maintain high quality for extended periods of time. Thus, an understanding of the chemistry of foods is critical to ensuring high quality products for extended shelf life.
As I mentioned above, we process foods to ensure safety of the product, but we don't want to sacrifice quality if that can be helped. Think of the difference between canned and frozen vegetables, as compared to fresh product just harvested from the field. The tomato provides an interesting example. Given a choice, we would prefer a fresh tomato that was picked when it had ripened on the vine--that's when we get the best tomato flavor. However, in many places, the growing season is limited and our choices become fewer when vine-fresh tomatoes are unavailable. This is where food preservation comes in. A can of tomatoes, preserved by cooking, does not have the same quality (flavor, etc.) as that fresh tomato taken right off the vine. However, by canning the tomato, we make it available during winter months. Even store-bought tomatoes often don't have that same fresh-flavor characteristic. Our shipping (trucking, rail, etc.) industry is very well developed so that we can pick tomatoes in California and have them delivered to Wisconsin within a week. However, if we picked those tomatoes when they were ripe, they would be old and mushy by the time we got them in Wisconsin. The problem is further compounded when the country of origin is in the Southern Hemisphere--shipping distances are farther. The solution to this problem is typically to harvest the tomato before it is ripened, while it is still green, and then allow it to chemically ripen during transportation so that it turns red as it hits our grocery shelf. In this way, we can have "fresh" tomatoes all year round. However, we sacrifice a bit of flavor for that convenience since the nature of the chemical reactions changes a bit when the fruit is off the vine. Thus, the overall quality (primarily flavor in this case) is slightly different. In all processing techniques for preserving foods, we make these choices that result in sacrifices of attributes like flavor. If we were to choose irradiation as our method of preserving the tomato, it would last much longer on the shelf, but we would have to deal with other issues. The point is that processing of foods is something we have to do to ensure the highest quality of safe foods available for the consumer. Sure, there are examples of highly-processed foods that are more for convenience and enjoyment--the Twinkie, with a shelf life of over a year, comes to mind--but even these products have a place in the food chain.
What a Food Scientist needs to understand is how a processing technology influences the food. Does it change flavor, color, texture or some other attribute of the food? More importantly, does a process technology result in anything detrimental to human consumption? This understanding can only come through knowledge of the principles of Physics as they apply to an engineering process. In irradiation technology, it is the electromagnetic radiation that impacts the food, whereas in conventional canning, an understanding of heat transfer principles is most important. Thus, a Food Scientist needs to have an appreciation of Physics and Engineering to be able to ensure that a product is treated sufficiently to be safe, but not excessively so that it significantly changes character (flavor, appearance, etc.).
There are other fields that a well-trained Food Scientist must understand, but the three main ones are microbiology, chemistry and engineering. Probably the next most important field is Nutrition. We primarily eat foods for the nutritional benefits, although that's not the only reason we eat, so it is important that a Food Scientist have a perspective of the nutritional aspects of the foods they work with. This goes well beyond the Food Pyramid these days, since one of the hottest new areas in foods is what are called nutraceuticals. These are foods that contain some pharmaceutical aspect. Anything that has added antioxidants, for example, which help fight against cancer, can be considered a nutraceutical. Although there is still plenty of debate about what all this means, that hasn't stopped food companies from marketing the idea. The one I like the best is the Think Bar. According to the directions on the package, you need to eat it 30 minutes before thinking to get the most benefit.
Another discipline that impacts food technology is Business and Marketing. Clearly, someone who will go into a food corporation must have an appreciation of the business side of the food industry. An idea for a new product may be quite stimulating, but if it can't be produced for a reasonable cost, there is little chance of success in the market place. By the way, can you think of a reason why we don't freeze tomatoes for preservation? Is there a technological reason or is it simply a business decision?
Another interesting discipline that is important to a well-trained Food Scientist is sensory science, which might be considered a branch of psychology. An important aspect of eating is the enjoyment that goes with it. We eat not just for nutritional reasons, but also for psychological reasons. Probably the most important aspect of eating is the sensory experience--how does the food taste? Every new food product put into the market place has gone through an extensive sensory evaluation, by both trained people and the general public, so that there is a good chance of acceptance of that new product. A well-trained Food Scientist should understand the fundamentals of sensory science, how to set up a sensory panel and analyze the results.
Food Science as a Career
What functions does a Food Scientist perform? This is actually a difficult question to answer since there is such a wide range of job functions in the food industry that it is difficult to touch on everything. Let me start by considering what most of the BS graduates in Food Science do upon graduation. Although each University would have their own figures, some typical job functions and the approximate percentage of students who go into that area are shown in Table 1. Note that people often change positions after being in the workplace for some time, so a Food Scientist might move through his/her career with increasing job responsibilities.
| Job Title | Approximate Percentage of Students Employed |
|---|---|
| Quality Assurance | 30-40% |
| Product/operations management | 20-25% |
| Product development | 10-15% |
| Graduate school | 15-30% |
| Technical sales | 5-10% |
| Regulatory agency | < 5% |
| Other (Students who work outside the profession) | 10-15% |
Probably the majority of students with BS degrees in Food Science start out their careers working in a quality control lab for some food company. The responsibility of this position is to evaluate product on a daily basis to ensure that it meets the desired specifications. The most important analysis is usually to test for microbial contamination to ensure a high level of food safety. However, other analyses are also performed depending on the nature of the food product.
Perhaps about a quarter of the students graduating with a BS in Food Science begin their careers as production supervisors. These people oversee operations in a food processing plant to ensure that everything operates as expected. Besides the technical skills necessary to understand the effects of processing conditions on the food, this person must also be skilled in people and time management. The business side of Food Science will also be important here.
A smaller percentage of BS level students begin their careers in new product development. However, this is typically the domain of the MS and PhD graduates, especially at larger companies. Nevertheless, there are many smaller companies that hire BS grads to help develop new product ideas, look at the business analysis, develop the formulations and processing conditions for the product, and ultimately help launch these new products into the marketplace. In general, these students utilize a wide range of knowledge obtained in the Food Science curriculum.
The number of students who continue on for advanced degrees (MS and PhD) in Food Science is continually increasing. In fact, for some companies, the starting degree is the MS degree and not the BS. These are typically the larger companies who are looking for people to do new product development. The extra preparation for the advanced degree (requires some innovative research) helps these graduates compete in the rapid, and sometimes hectic, pace of new product development. Since admission to graduate school is highly competitive, undergraduate students with the highest grades have the best chance of getting admission to graduate programs. The rewards for the extra two years of schooling required to obtain a MS degree include higher starting salaries, greater responsibilities and more rapid advancement within a company.
Another career that is growing is technical sales. Companies that supply ingredients in foods, from corn syrup to specialty flavors, hire BS Food Science graduates to market their products and help develop new applications for them. These people must communicate with other food professionals (product development specialists or even process engineers) about the benefits and capabilities of their ingredients. A good background in Food Science is required to cover the wide range of potential applications, although many people focus on specific product groups (i.e., candy, baked goods, etc.).
To be successful as a Food Scientist, graduates need a solid background in the principles of chemistry, microbiology and engineering as well as some training in these other disciplines (Business, Marketing, etc.). However, even someone with this technical knowledge might not succeed in the food industry--there are many other skills necessary to succeed at the highest level. These might be called "career" skills and include such things (among others) as oral and written communication, problem solving, critical thinking, computer skills, and the ability to deal with interpersonal relations. These "career" skills may or may not be taught specifically in University courses, but the graduate most sought after by food companies is the one that clearly shows these skills during the interview process.
A Future in Food Science
The food industry is one of the largest in the world and is continually expanding as the population grows. Clearly, the need for well-trained people who understand the principles of Food Science will continue to grow into the future. Job opportunities for recent Food Science graduates follow the cyclic nature of the economy to some extent, but there are always new openings and there will be a continuing demand for Food Scientists.
The traditional roles of the Food Scientist, quality control and new product development, will continue to be of critical importance. However, there will always be new challenges. For example, the continued globalization of the food industry will provide new opportunities and challenges for the Food Scientist. New processing technologies (particularly nonthermal preservation techniques) will allow Food Scientists to improve existing products and develop new ones with improved qualities. The continued development of biotechnology and genetically modified materials will provide new and unique raw materials for Food Scientists to work with.