A lengthening global food chain means graduates in the industry today need a rounded set of skills as well as confident voices to tackle food safety and health challenges. That’s according to Professor Dolores O’Riordan, Director of the Food and Health Institute at University College Dublin (UCD).
Long and winding food chain
“As an export nation, we are now reaching corners of the world we would not have dreamed about 10 years ago, and that brings new challenges,” says Dolores, who is Principal Investigator in two Enterprise Ireland-supported academic-industry consortia, the Dairy Processing Technology Centre and Food for Health Ireland.
“The food chain has become very long and quite complicated, with the need to transport products across an array of climates and regulatory landscapes. On top of that, consumers are driving the demand for ‘clean labels’ on products and the industry needs to respond.”
Almost all food science undergraduates will ultimately move into the food industry. They need to be well-versed in all aspects of food safety, including microbial and chemical contamination, and also the nutritional perspective, according to Dolores.
One of the key elements in student training is getting them out on placement in industry, and ensuring they see the issues first-hand and apply what they learn, she says.
“Students need to develop a really good understanding of risk right along the food chain,” she says. The food industry plays a critical role in ensuring the health of the population by producing safe and healthy foods.
“A company’s reputation hinges on the security it can give in guaranteeing its customers that its product is of the highest quality and complies with legislation and regulations.”
Milking success
On the island of Ireland, a significant recent change has been the expansion of the dairy industry, which has opened up new opportunities for highly skilled researchers and graduates, explains Dolores.
Dolores works on many different projects in these consortia. She is particularly interested in combining ingredients so that a food can have a desired nutritional profile or added functional ingredient and still taste good to the consumer.
“Often we want to add a bioactive ingredient to a food to improve health – perhaps manage blood sugar better or increase a feeling of satiety or build muscle in the elderly – but the added ingredient might have a bitter or unpalatable taste,” she explains.
“So we use our knowledge of food chemistry and encapsulation and the biology of how we sense flavour and how we digest food, and we apply that to formulate the food ingredients in a way that the food can deliver the health benefit and the consumer wants to eat it.”
At UCD, Dolores has also developed a microwaveable cheese-based product for the snack market that is high in protein and fibre, but low in fat and salt.
Academic-industry benefits
Dolores and her colleagues at the Food and Health Institute work closely with industry in many aspects of their work. These relationships help everyone to understand the challenges others face and the technical skills that can make a difference.
“We get input into what core skills industry really wants from graduates, and the relationship improves student and researcher placements and exchanges,” she says. “We can also see where industry might benefit in terms of up-skilling their staff. We have just established a continuous professional development unit to give industry staff the opportunity to keep themselves at the forefront of the technologies that are out there.”
Confident communication
Another key skill that the new generation of food scientists needs to develop is communication, Dolores stresses. “You see a lot of unscientific information, particularly in the media, about topics like gluten and sugar, often put out there by people who have great communication skills,” she says.
“We need to improve the communication ability of our graduates because it is incumbent on the new generation of scientists to go out there and be confident about presenting their case on food and health from a scientific perspective.
“If a scientist is competing against actors and models and celebrity chefs,they often wouldn’t feel comfortable in that role. It is up to us to instil that confidence in the young graduates to make sure the public is fully informed of the facts.”
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