Monday, February 24, 2014

GMOs, Energy Drinks, and "Natural" Labeling: Controversial Issues Come to Anaheim, CA



On March 6, 2014 the Southern California section of the Institute of Food Technologists will host the annual "Hot Topics" conference, featuring discussions on controversial issues including GMOs, energy drinks and use of the word "natural" on food labels. 

This conference is open to anyone in the food/beverage and supplement industries, from food reporters to restaurant owners; from ingredient buyers, suppliers and 'marketeers' to food scientists, product developers and nutritionists. The purpose of this conference is to provide information on the topics most likely to confront those in the industry:
Should I market my product as an energy drink or a functional drink? Should we label our product a food or a supplement and what happens if we pick the wrong category? Can I say this fruit juice is natural? How can we tell our consumers we just can't do non-GM products without changing our entire business model and supply chain? 

The purpose of this conference is so people in the food, beverage and supplement industry can come learn about the some of the challenging topics our industry is facing. As a food scientist and one of the event coordinators I'm proud of the speakers we've assembled. We're hoping for engaging discussions and open minds so people won't be afraid to ask questions or to answer them honestly. Especially when it comes to GMOs and energy drinks, there's always the concern the question-and-answer portion of the presentations will turn ugly. It's happened before.

Scheduled Speakers and Topics:
Food/Beverage or Supplement? Guidelines and watch-outs for marketing in either category
Justin Prochnow, Attorney/Shareholder with Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Biotechnology: How different companies are handling the issue and how to address the issue with your consumers
John Ruff, Former IFT Chair, and Connor Link, Sr. Digital/Social Media Editor for New Hope Naturals Media

Satiety, A Balancing Act: Hunger, satiety and the role of taste and smell in food preference
            Dr. Richard Mattes, Distinguished Professor of Nutrition, Purdue University


The 'Natural' Perspective: What this term means to industry and to consumers
            Catherine Adams Hutt, PhD, RD, Chief Science & Regulatory Officer, Sloan Trends


The Southern California Food Industry Conference (SCFIC) will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center Marriott on March 6, 2014 from 8:30am – 4pm.  Winners of the SCFIC Gluten-Free Product Development Student Competition will be announced and awarded during lunch. For More Information: http://www.scifts.net/html/scfic.html
 

Monday, February 17, 2014

Stability Studies May Lead to Instability - Food Scientist Life



This is a series of posts in which I share snippets of what it's like to be a food scientist. As a product developer for dry powder shakes, there are some lessons I never learned in school and some challenges I never saw coming.


Green-Eyed Insight on Stability Studies
Have you ever looked at an expiration date and wondered, "How do they know?" Determining or confirming the shelf-life of a product is important for several reasons, but the process itself can be a bit mind-numbing. Here's what I didn't learn in school.


Why It's Important
Expiration dates are based on the answers to several different questions. When does the product become unpalatable? When do the vitamins and minerals degrade below the amounts on the label? When does the product become unsafe to eat? To sell a product that meets consumer sensory expectations, label claims and food safety requirements, you have to know the answers to all three questions. 


Side-note: Why It's Confusing
This would be a great time to note that expiration dates can be perplexing. An expiration date is not quite the same as the "sell by", "use by" or "best by" date. For example, "use by" is meant to help consumers know when a product is no longer good to eat whereas "best by" and "sell by" are meant to help those selling the product manage their stock (think of those racks of discounted "Manager's Special" items in back of the grocery store). Misinterpretation of these dates leads to as much as $165 billion in food waste PER YEAR according to a report by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and the National Resources Defense Council [1, 2].

Why It's Complicated

As a product developer, I work on a dry powder shake that's supposed to last one year. Our products don't use the "best by" or "use by" terms; our packages say "EXP MM/DD/YYYY". Up until that date, our product is expected to taste as delicious as the day it was made, and must provide all the vitamins/mineral and nutrient contents on the label. This is harder than it seems because flavors, proteins, vitamins/minerals and oxidation-prone (air-sensitive) ingredients like fish oil, chia and flax all have different rates of degradation. In some cases, products start out with vitamin/mineral overages so there's enough left at the end of shelf-life to meet the label claims. Instead of using overages, you might shorten the shelf-life or slow the degradation of certain nutrients with encapsulation [3].

How We Do It Here
In order to continuously improve the food safety and quality of our finished product, my team and I are always looking at alternate ingredients. For example, say blueberry powder A is great, but blueberry powder B is cheaper and has lower heavy metal contents. We can't just switch from one to another; what if blueberry powder B makes the product taste funny after 6 months? Our product is supposed to be delicious and nutritious for a whole year. We've got to test this. 

Food science stability studies
500 servings x 35g each x 4 variants
Step One: Make your blends. 
For your control and all your variants you need to make a big enough batch to put a few servings into the freezer ("time zero"), a few servings into room temperature storage, and a few servings into accelerated storage (where 1 week at 40* Celsius is equivalent to 2 months at room temp). Accelerated storage is a marvelous tool because it only takes six weeks to determine how the product will taste after one year in real time. Plus, since my office is always freezing cold, I rather enjoy fetching samples from accelerated storage and feeling the hot air hit my face.
 
break big tasks into small steps



Step Two: Divvy your blends up into single pouches. 
Warning – this may take a while, depending on the size of your batches and number of variants. Unless you have Audible or music or some metaphysical question to ponder you may feel your mind slipping a little. Fight the urge to listen to podcasts because you need to pay attention to what you're doing. I swore off listening to Baseball Tonight and "Wait Wait …Don't Tell Me" because once I lost track of what sample I was working on and had to start over. Rookie mistake.

Step Three: Seal your pouches. 
Make darn sure they're sealed. There's nothing worse than putting all the time and energy into preparing samples then seeing random powder piles on the shelves inside the stability chamber.

Plastic bags and small boxes come in handy!
Step Four: Set calendar reminders.
Include specifics on what samples to pull, from what location (freezer, room temp, accelerated) on which days. Even though you've put all this work into setting up the stability study, it's not uncommon to set it and forget it. Putting the samples in the Hot Box mentally feels like the job is done – no more Open Loops. Since one week in the 40*C chamber is the equivalent of two months, it's important not to miss the days you're supposed to pull a sample.

Step Five: Taste. 
This might be a mentally exhausting exercise based on the number of samples you have to pull. Unlike Pavlov's dogs you might grow to dread the sound of the calendar reminder, especially if there's a lot of samples or if they're not aging well. This is where oyster crackers and carbonated water come in handy – see previous post.

Bottom Line

Shelf-life and stability studies can be mind-numbing, tedious, time-consuming experiments, but you'll learn more about your ingredients and your product than you could possibly anticipate. It's kind of exciting to have that knowledge that others aren't privy to, and that knowledge improves your product and your skill set as a product developer. That is the silver lining.


Resources:
[2] NRDC: "The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America" http://www.nrdc.org/food/expiration-dates.asp
[3] Maxx Performance Newsletter – Winter 2014 http://email.maxxperform.com/t/ViewEmail/y/B1F4EE53EC2CEA20

Related Posts:

 

Next Lesson - "The Linger": A Food Science Horror Story
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Stay tuned for more lessons from the lab. 
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Friday, February 7, 2014

Energy Drink of the Month - February 2014



Many people have a love/hate relationship with February. Maybe you're happy there are so many three-day weekends in February or maybe you feel like it's harder to meet your monthly deadlines because the month is so short. Perhaps you're looking forward to receiving something cute and fluffy on Valentine's Day, or perhaps you're excited about that pint of Half-Baked on Singles Awareness Day. Whether you like it or not, love is in the air, and I love this month's energy drink. 
How cute is this? It squeaks too!

Monday, February 3, 2014

Oyster Crackers, Carbonated Water and Spitting -- Life as a Food Scientist



This is a series of posts in which I share snippets of what it's like to be a food scientist. As a product developer for dry powder shakes, there are some lessons I never learned in school and some challenges I never saw coming.



Lessons I Never Learned in Food Science: The Value of Oyster Crackers, Carbonated Water and Spitting
 
Oyster crackers, carbonated water and spitting – three things without which my job would be impossible. Sort of. My first month of the job I told my colleague and new friend, "I don't want this product to be developed by someone who's almost never swallowed it." She just smiled. Newbie.


Oyster Crackers



Anytime we're taste-testing a product, we use oyster crackers to make sure there's no carry-over. For instance, if you're comparing two dry powder shakes, each one made with a different supplier's protein powder, you need to make sure your mouth is neutral before that first sip of either one. If the first sample you taste has strong milky or bitter notes, those notes can linger in your mouth and taint your impression of the second sample. If you're just comparing two or three products you can probably forgo the crackers. When you're tasting 5 or more samples, they become necessary.

Carbonated water

In our lab, we go through carbonated water like an infant goes through diapers. The best investment we've ever made was our soda stream. Before adding that to our family of lab equipment, we'd have to buy one case of Perrier a week. Like the oyster crackers, the sparkling water is essential to neutralize the mouth between tastings. Carbonated water beats regular flat water here because the carbonation helps wash away any lingering sweetness, especially from high intensity sweeteners.


Spitting

I stand firm in my position against spitting but there are days when I've been temped. Tasting sample after sample after sample can sometimes be mentally exhausting, and it definitely puts a damper on your appetite.The reason spitting is beneficial is it somewhat mitigates burnout. When I started my job as Quality Assurance with an ice cream and mochi manufacturer, I got to taste ice cream every single morning. That sounds like every kid's dream job, and it was wonderful for about eight months. Then I started getting sick of ice cream, and the best part of QA testing was the search for the smiley faces.
The air bubbles really do make smiley faces!


Burnout still happens when you've been working on the same product for more than a year. My boss can never eat pudding again. My friend has sworn off flavored beverages. I refuse to buy any more dry powder protein shakes because I taste them so much at work. Nonetheless, I love my job. Bringing a new product into the market feels like sending your child off to school for the first time. "Be good, make me proud, I hope everybody loves you!"
A typical Tuesday in the lab...taste, observe, record, think of a new way to improve formula, repeat.
Related Posts:
What They Didn't Teach Me in Food Science
The Xanthan Gum Disaster

Next Lesson - Stability Studies May Lead to Instability
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Stay tuned for more lessons from the lab. 
Follow GreenEyedGuide on Twitter