Food Science

[siserilla]

I'm really interested in the science behind cooking, what kind of jobs are available for that?

[chrose]

There are all sorts of interesting jobs from R & D to food safety and research. However I have found that for the most part these jobs require a BS degree.

[siserilla]

So what type of BS degree would I need? Something from the CIA or something from a state university?

[phatch]

Probably Chemistry, with a good dose of Bio-chem too.

Phil

[siserilla]

Ah gotcha. Well I did some research and a local state university has an actual food science degree, but I think that might be more towards nutrition etc.

[kuan]

Chemical Engineering degrees are really sought after in the Food industry. You can get into R&D with a BS in Chemical Engineering. Most larger companies don't hire a BS unless you did an internship or had prior experience there. The key is the engineering part, not the chemistry.

You can also get a degree in Food Science. Most of the larger companies require at least a MS in Food Science.

A combined Food Science/Culinary degree will let you apply for Research Chef positions.

There are other non R&D positions out there. Quality is one of them. Again, an engineering degree is required. There's also packaging, operations, and of course the marketing side of it for which an MBA is a definite requirement. One thing's for certain these days is that you need an advanced degree or proven experience in any of these fields to be seriously considered for a job.

[siserilla]

not to sound dumb but what does r&d stand for?

i bought a lot of food science books and i'm going to start reading them soon. someone gave me a website www.culinology.com and it's the research chefs association. clemson (i think that's where it is) they have a food science/culinary arts program.

i love working in the kitchen but i think i would enjoy doing more research and what not.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by siserilla

what does r&d stand for?

Research and development.

[kuan]

If your interest is mainly culinary then you should get a culinary degree from the CIA or JW and then get a Food Science (FS) degree from a good school. This will steer you toward a Research Chef position at places like McCormick, Schwann's foods, Kerry Foods. These are places who use chefs to develop concepts and flavors but requires their chefs to understand the food manufacturing process and work with food scientists who do flavor work and scaleup formulations, the engineering group, packaging engineers, the marketing group which does market research, the sales group, etc. Of course there's a lot more than that alone. This is just a start.

Currently, there is absolutely no 4 year school which wasn't a cooking school first which offers even a semi decent culinary program. None, forget the culinary/FS degree. Go to a real cooking school for that.

[siserilla]

Gotcha.

I'm supposed to start at the CIA in January, so I'll see where it leads me from there, more than likely I'll go get the food science degreee.