Hey all! I'm about halfway through a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry, and while I love pharma, my ultimate dream is to work in the food industry--especially in the plant-based protein sector. My dissertation is focused on formulation techniques for peptide/protein drugs, so some of my skills might directly translate to food R&D (mass spec, lipid formulation, cell culture). However, I want to find ways to bulk up my skillset and make myself a stronger candidate for food science when I finish my degree.

At this point, I'm set on finishing my PhD and can't realistically change the topic of my dissertation, but I would love to find classes, conferences, really anything to gain more knowledge outside of my ninja creamis and homemade seitan lol. I'd also be open to doing an internship after grad school, but I don't even know where to start. Any advice is much appreciated!!

I’m currently a technician at a histology lab with five years of total lab experience. I also have three years of experience as a line cook. Is it common and/or possible to make a quick transition for healthcare to the food industry and if so what jobs should I look for if I’m striving to one day make it up to R&D.

Hi all im a dietitian looking to switch to food science. I originally got into the field because I love food and science and wanted to help people live healthier lives. Ive quickly realized i HATE counseling patients and dont really love clinical work.
Given my interests i figured food science would be right up my alley.

Anyways, I often see in here plenty of other dietitians wanting to make the switch sooooo, I wanted to see if theres anyone here that has successfully made the switch to R&D that would be willing to talk about how they did so.

Also, for anyone in R&D, tell me what a day in the life is like and what your favorite things are about the job.

Thanks all !

I’m trying to identify why an old Brazilian powdered drink (“Fresh Guaraná”) tasted completely different from the current version.

I already know the modern product uses sugar plus multiple high-intensity sweeteners.
What I’m looking for is: old ingredient list, back label, formulation clues, changes in flavor systems, whether anyone worked in beverage/flavor R&D around that time.
Even if you don’t know this specific product, I’d love to hear how beverage flavor systems evolved around 2010–2015.

Hi there! I have always been interested in food science and i will be studying it next year at WUR. Right now I am trying to perfect a ninja creami base mostly from a texture side that should come to roughly 200-250 calories and 20-30g of protein

Right now this is as far as i got:

Wet:

250g 0% ultra filtered milk (5% protein)

50g 3.5% milk

5g vegetable glycerin

3g vanilla extract

Dry:

15g PEScience 80/20 whey-casein blend

15g skim milk powder

6g fibersol (resistant maltodextrin)

0.25g guar

0.20g LBG

15g of 4:1 sweetener (uses erythritol, stevia and sucralose, 4x as sweet as sugar)

0.6g salt (I use a salt that is 40/60 potassium-sodium)

This is the base, I also tried making other flavors like a butter cookie one where I add 5g of brown butter and use 0.4g of soy lechitin to emulsify and toast half of the skim milk powder. I also have some myprotein flavordrops and lorann's bakery emulsions, suggestions for taste is also appreciated.

I think a big change would be to use allulose but I am within the EU so I can't really get any (I have some on me but I am experimenting with them for baking and making caramel, one of my friend brings some for me from korea here and there)

EDIT: I forgot to add how I make the recipe itself. I just mix the dry ingredients and with an immersion blender I blend it with the wet ingredients and bring the whole mixture up to 85C for 2 minutes to hydrate the gums.

Hi, I’m looking for some food science books/textbooks. I’m applying for a job in R&D for a chocolate/candy/baking company. I have a lot of experience in bakeries but never took food science courses in college. I’m happy to buckle down and do some research before going in for my interviews. I have the practical knowledge but not the scientific lingo lol. Thank you for your recommendations.

I'm two semesters out from graduating with a masters in food technology from UGA, and I already have my BS in culinary arts. The masters program is fully online and I started pretty much immediately after my undergrad, and I'm wondering if it's necessary to do some sort of internship to get lab experience or if I shouldn't worry. I'm considering working in quality assurance or control, but r&d isn't off the table.

i’ve been hearing that commercial brand frozen fruit is generally considered safe from cyclospora, how true is that? specifically i have kirkland wild blueberries, and pitaya foods brand dragonfruit packs, if i made smoothies with those without cooking them or anything, just as they are, is that okay or still a risk?

Hi everyone,

I have a Bachelor in food science technology I am looking for fully remote jobs. I am expecially interested in regulatory affairs, food safety, quality assurance, technical writing, or other roles related to food industry.

Can anyone recommend legitimate website or companies that hire remote workers in this field.

I would really appreciate any suggestions or personal experience. Thank you.

I am a recent Graduate and my long-term goal is to work in R&D/product development.

I currently have a QC offer from a food manufacturer that pays well.

I also have an interview for a laboratory technician role at a food testing company. The pay is lower, but that’s not my main priority as i care more about which one could get me into r&d in 2 years.

Which would be the better stepping stone?
For those who are now food technologists or working in R&D, what was your first job after graduating?

I’ve been reading into adenosine monophosphate (AMP) as a bitter taste receptor blocker. It’s GRAS-approved and there’s published work showing it reduces bitterness in grapefruit juice (naringin) and various oral pharmaceuticals (pseudoephedrine, ranitidine, acetaminophen), reportedly by blocking gustducin signaling rather than just masking with sweetness.

What I can’t find is anything on how it behaves in a high-ethanol matrix. Ethanol itself activates several TAS2Rs directly, so I’m curious whether:

1. AMP’s bitterness-inhibiting effect would transfer to ethanol-driven bitterness the same way it does with naringin or drug bitterness, given ethanol likely hits a different/broader set of receptors
   
2. Anyone knows of formulation or sensory work on bitter blockers in spirits or cocktails specifically (vs. juice/pharma)
   
3. There’s a reason (technical or regulatory) this hasn’t been explored commercially — is it a stability issue at high ABV, a receptor-selectivity issue, or just lack of industry incentive since bitterness is “expected” in spirits?

Also interested in how a food scientist would even approach testing this properly — starting concentration ranges, sensory panel design, etc. — versus what’s out there for pharma/juice applications.

Any papers, patents, or firsthand formulation experience appreciated. Thank you!

I have almost 5 years of work experience in R&D, and is currently earning a good salary. Now I want to go in depth and possibly migrate to another country. When I reached out to one of my fav professors, I got an offer to join a PhD under him. The topic blew my mind, and I'm about to apply. The professor is one of the top 10 scientists in the world for food science. This is in a North American country. I'm sceptical about the pay and the industrial prospects afterwards. I might get a similar or slightly higher stipend during this study. Is it worth going for?

I'm still processing the article, but it is from the AAN and not some journal farm.

What do you all think the impact will be on (re)formulations in sugar-free products? Continued shift towards mogroside/steviols and more interest in tagatose and allulose?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260717033213.htm

I graduated this year with a BS in food science and management from a top university in the middle east. I am looking for a job. The plan is to get a job and save up money which I will later use to go do a masters degree in food technology somewhere in Europe.

Other than Quality Assurance and Product Development, what can one do? where should I be looking for jobs?

I have mostly applied to product development and R&D since I am more interested in that. I am willing to relocate anywhere in the world for a good job but the market seems bleak and I have already gotten dozens of rejections, even for internships, although I fulfil all requirements most of the time. I imagine it is because I am applying internationally often and they would need to support my visa/s. I did my internships in quality assurance and I found it boring and repetitive. I don't think I would enjoy a long-term career in QA.

The concept of developing new products sounds really interesting and I have done some academic work in that field more or less, but no professional experience. Would aiming for QA jobs, since there's more of them and they seem to be less competitive, be a bad idea if I want to work in a more innovation-based field later on?

Any advice or insights to a new graduate would be highly appreciated.

Hi!

A while ago, I started working on a hot sauce company with a friend, and couldn't find the tools I needed when formulating and testing my recipes.

Coming from two decades of software engineering, I built something that turned out to be the perfect tool to ease my scientific mind (precise measurements, reliable scaling, costing, production, traceability, etc...).

I'm not linking my project because I'm not here to promote it, but to figure out how people actually work before assuming I know what they need (hence me calling this post "informal user research"), and it seems to be the perfect sub to ask.

If you have a few minutes to spare, could you somehow tell me about your company/hobby/project and answer these questions:

• Where do you keep your formulas/recipes today (Excel, Google Sheets, dedicated software, notebooks...)?
• When a formula/recipe evolves over time, how do you keep track of versions and know which one was used for a particular batch?
• How do you go from a small lab batch to production? Is scaling straightforward, or does it usually require manual adjustments?
• Do you keep production records, calculate costs, or track ingredient changes? If so, how?
• What's the most frustrating or time-consuming part of your formulation workflow today?
• How do regulatory requirements affect your formulation workflow? What compliance-related tasks are the biggest pain points?

Side note: This is a repost from r/cosmeticscience, which applies here too; I reformulated the questions with ChatGPT to make extra sure they're understood the way I want them to be understood. This is not an AI-generated post, I'm just French, and we're still real people, at least as real as we were before LLMs took over.

Thanks a lot for your time!

Realistically, how difficult is to develop a dairy free yogurt/cottage cheese idea? I have methods, i know how it needs to taste. Would it even be worthy ?

I made a concentrated hibiscus syrup (hibiscus, sugar, water) for drinks. On its own, it’s a nice fuchsia. When I mixed it with canned pineapple juice (Dole), it turned a gorgeous amethyst color, which is definitely not the sum of the individual ingredients. I made the same drink with orange juice (which is similar in color and acidity to pineapple juice) and it was a dusty reddish (which is what I would have expected from both). I first suspected pH, but both orange juice and pineapple are acidic. The pineapple juice was canned, so I wouldn’t expect any of the pineapple’s bromelain to still be active.

I’m pretty confident something sciencey is happening; my question is, if not pH or enzymes, then what?

Pic 1: plain hibiscus

Pic 2: hibiscus and pineapple

Pic 3: hibiscus and orange juice

Since it's National Ice Cream day in the U.S. tomorrow, I wonder how local or chain ice cream shops develop all the dazzling flavors. Do they do it the same way as ice cream brands? How can one get involved in the development of new flavors at these shops??🍦🍨

Four years of chemistry, micro, thermal processing, a capstone with an actual CPG partner. You know what nobody covered once? Money. Not one professor, not one advisor, not the career fair people.

So I graduate, take the first QA job offered because it sounded science-y, and find out two years later im at 52k while my roommate who did a coding bootcamp for THREE MONTHS passed me in year one. Why is the profession that keeps the entire food supply safe treated like this?

And when you try to research it, the IFT survey is behind a paywall. Our own professional org charges us to find out we're underpaid, incredible stuff. I got more real numbers from old reddit threads and levels.fyi than from anything the field itself provides, for free.

I'm not even saying leave the field, I like the work. QA to product development is apparently the move and im working on it. Just wish someone had said any of this before I signed anything.

I’m from Tunisia and i’m thinking about creating a product which is a canned refrigerated coffee for it to be sold in supermarkets and even smaller stores.. the thing is i have no clue where to start right now when it comes to ingredients and processing.. like what are the steps that it needs to go through so it doesn’t expire within some days and what are the kinda drinks that i’m able to sell .. if anyone has any idea i would really appreciate some help thank you

Why does my 1 egg white looks green, I know if we over cook the egg when boiling, the sulphur reacts with yolk and forms a coating. But this rather looks different.
I might have boiled it for far too much time, but I boiled both the eggs at the same time.

Although I dont have any foul smell from them either.

Three questions. What flavor do you all think the natural flavor provides? Why would chocolate even need natural flavor? And finally, what flavor do you think the artificial flavoring provides?