Six Super Careers in the Field of Food Science
The crunchy, savory flavor of your favorite potato chips, the perfect blend of sweet and tangy sips of fruit juice on a hot summer day and the porous packaging that keeps the cherry tomatoes you buy at the grocery store fresh — it might not seem like it, but these things all have something in common — food science.
“Food science is what allows us to take all the amazing foods that we produce on the farm and make them into the foods that we eat every day,” says Gabriel Keith Harris, professor of food science and co-director of Undergraduate Programs for Food Science.
The Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University offers students three related majors: food science, bioprocessing science, and nutrition science.
Harris says food science emphasizes the chemistry, microbiology and engineering that allow for the safe production of delicious and healthy foods at an industrial scale. Food science graduates from the department have gone on to work in well-known companies such as Kraft, Heinz, Coca-Cola, Hershey, General Mills and Kellogg’s, among many others.
Whether you like tinkering in the kitchen, exploring different flavor combinations or have a passion for ensuring that fruits and vegetables make it to the grocery store shelf-ready, there’s a career for you in food science.
Expand your palate with these six food science roles.
Research and Development
“This is someone who’s going to be producing new foods or new versions of foods that already exist,” Harris says.
This role could focus on developing new flavors or new packaging to accommodate a reimagined snack. It could also mean turning a food that contains gluten into a gluten-free food, reducing the fat content of a food or shifting a product from conventional ingredients to organic ingredients.
Quality Assurance or Quality Control
These are the people who ensure food leaving a factory or facility is both safe and of the quality consumers expect, Harris says. The role may include monitoring production processes, testing products and assessing compliance with quality and safety standards.
Food Safety and Regulation
Food safety is an essential component of commercial food production. From auditing factories to ensure safe production practices are in place to testing food in company labs for microbial and chemical safety, there are many ways to find meaningful work in this field.
Many state and federal regulatory agencies, such as the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture, play a variety of regulatory roles within food safety aimed at inspecting and assessing the safety of fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry and other commercially produced foods. In addition to food safety, regulatory agencies also provide guidance for the labeling and nutritional content of foods.
“There are a lot of different areas that you can get involved in within food safety and regulatory roles,” Harris says.
Food Process Engineering
Do you really like to know what makes things tick? Food process engineers literally design the machinery that makes the food we eat every day, Harris says. From water purifiers to milk pasteurizers to ice cream freezers to the spray driers that produce protein powder, engineers are involved in every step of food production.
Marketing and Sales
If you like food and food science, but lab life isn’t your thing, Harris says there’s another avenue to take. Students who are strong communicators and love to travel might find a great fit in marketing and sales for a food brand.
“This is all about communicating and following up with customers and meeting their needs,” he says.
Sensory Science and Flavor Chemistry
Whether it’s a food we enjoy or one we don’t, we use all of our senses to experience food. Sensory scientists seek to understand how the aroma, taste, texture, appearance, and even sound relate to consumer acceptance of new or existing foods.
Flavor chemists specifically focus on developing artificial or natural flavors that meet consumer needs.
“If a company wants a particular flavor in its food, you can call up the flavor chemist,” Harris says. “And if that flavor doesn’t exist, a flavor chemist will literally make that flavor.”
There are so many career directions within food science. All six careers mentioned here are challenging, rewarding and in demand. Food science is a science you can eat!
This post was originally published in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences News.
