What is Food Science?

Do you know that everything you eat and consume, that is purchased from a store or a restaurant, has been analyzed or created by Food Scientists?

Food Scientists continue to make new and improved products that are healthy, tasty, and safe for consumers. They are making more convenient foods for this fast pace growing world. They reach to all age groups infants, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, and elders. All of these age groups require different sources of nutrition and food scientists fulfill these needs for each age group. Food scientist creates flavors that contribute to soda, flavored water, energy drinks, alcoholic drinks, fruit juices, any type of beverage you can think of. They also create new flavors in candy, ice cream, chips, canned foods, refrigerated foods, boxed foods, frozen foods, anything that can be consumed and bought from a store or restaurant a food scientist creates/deals with.

There are many different careers that come along with being a food scientists a few being, product development, sensory analysis, and consumer safety. Product developer main goals are to take flavors and insert them into different food products. For example, making a potato chip taste like chili cheese french fries, or taking gum and making it taste like a delicious dessert; these are just a couple examples of what product developers do. A person who does sensory analysis is a highly trained panelist who goes through a series of different questions when tasting a new food product. The questions that could be asked are, does the product taste good, what is the texture like, what is the smell like, what do you think of the color, etc? These questions are usually on a ranking scale and that is one of the ways that a company can tell if consumers will thrive for this new product. Sensory analysis is also used to make sure the flavor of each batch taste the exact same, to ensure a high quality product. A person who deals with consumer safety can work for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They do tasks like investigate food related illnesses or deaths, regulate companies, plan and direct regulatory programs, develop new inspection procedures and techniques. This field of food science is very critical to companies and the consumer; it keeps the consumer safe and protects the companies from possible law suits.

There are many misconceptions that come along with the title of food scientists. A few being that they work in a lab all day, they are chefs, and people do not know they exist. Well this is not true, yes, food scientists can work in a lab, but they do not spend all of their time in it. A lot of discussion occurs within a company world wide to make sure they are all on the same page. For example, Disney Food Scientists in the United States, have phone conferences with Disney in China to share their new ideas with each other. A combination of product development, sensory analysis, and consumer safety can all be taken into consideration at one point in each day of a food scientist.


http://www.ift.org/knowledge-center/learn-about-food-science/world-without-food-science.aspx
http://foodsci.k-state.edu/facilities/sensory-analysis.html
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WorkingatFDA/CareerDescriptions/ucm113286.htm