Food science
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Food science is a discipline concerned with all technical aspects of food, beginning with harvesting or slaughtering, and ending with its cooking and consumption. It is considered one of the agricultural sciences, and is usually considered distinct from the field of nutrition.
Examples of the activities of food scientists include the development of new food products, design of processes to produce these foods, choice of packaging materials, shelf-life studies, sensory evaluation of the product with trained expert panels or potential consumers, as well as microbiological and chemical testing. Food scientists at universities may study more fundamental phenomena that are directly linked to the production of particular food product and its properties. In the U.S., food science is typically studied at land-grant universities.
Food science is a highly interdisciplinary applied science. It incorporates concepts from many different fields including microbiology, chemical engineering, biochemistry, and many others.
Some of the subdisciplines of food science include:
- Food safety or Food microbiology - the causes and prevention of foodborne illness
- Food preservation - the causes and prevention quality degradation
- Food engineering - the industrial processes used to manufacture food
- Product development - the invention of new food products
- Sensory analysis - the study of how food is perceived by the consumer's senses
- Food chemistry - the molecular composition of food and the involvement of these molecules in chemical reactions
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