2016 Internship: Food Innovation Center

Another busy week at the FIC as usual but the highlights of this week were the FONA flavors class and the ideation session we had on Friday. With the flavors class it was put on by the FONA flavor company who have chosen as a company to use all of their marketing money on educating people about flavors. They did an incredibly good job teaching the class. For being eight hours straight they never lost my attention, they really knew how to set up a class in order to keep people interested. The last flavor class I took was more focused on creating the language of flavors so companies knew how to ask for the precise flavor they were looking for, but this class was more focused on how people perceive flavors as well as how flavors are combined to try to recreate a flavor made by nature. An example used in the class was apples and how an apple has approximately 2500 flavor components to create the signature apple flavor and how some products will use 2300 flavor components to try to recreate that flavor while others will just use the 50 most characterizing flavors of an apple. While it does not taste exactly like an apple it has enough of the flavor components of an apple that people can perceive the flavor as being apple. Another example discussed in the class was with chocolate milk and how if chocolate syrup is put in skim milk the flavor is sharp but disappears quickly but with milk having a higher fat content the flavor is more subtle but it will also linger on your tongue which creates a much more desirable taste. Overall it was a very informative day that I would gladly sit through again. Later in the week was the ideation session for salad dressings. We tasted 25 different dressings and it was surprising how few of them our group collectively did not like. I find it interesting how with every tasting I have done at the FIC I seem to like a certain sample the most while everyone else collectively thinks that that particular sample was their least favorite. While annoying some times to always be the outlier it is also important because I represent a different section of consumers which shows that while the people in the group tasting may not like a certain sample it does not necessarily mean that consumers will think the same.

This was my first 40 hour week at the FIC and it was definitely a very fun one. Another intern and I got to participate in a noodle class which a couple of people from international companies. The first day was mostly classes and pairing up into the groups that we would have for the rest of the week. My partner was a man who owned a company in India. On day two in the morning we made our noodles. I did not really know what to expect of the noodle process since there are many ways to make noodles but I was surprised to find that when all the ingredients were mixed into the dough that the dough was still a crumble and that it did not really stick together. But once it went through a machine to compress the ingredients and then stretch it into a sheet, the dough became very strongly bound and almost gum like in texture. The noodles we made were a ramen noodle fried into dried bricks of noodles. On the second part of day one through the morning of day four we switched between classes and working in the lab on formulating a seasoning packet that would be paired with the noodles. Since my group had extra time on the noodle making morning we ended up with two varieties of noodles to work with. It was interesting to see how cultures differ in terms of flavor profiles. In the end we ended up with two flavors tomato basil and spicy garlic. Both of which had some spice to them making your mouth burn if you were to eat a whole bowl of noodles. We also had to come up with a name as a group for our noodles, we went with the one my partner decided upon which was Dingle Noodles. Personally I do not think a product of this name would work well in the U.S. but that could be different for other cultures which don’t have double meanings for words and such.                             

This was a short work week with there being the Memorial holiday, but this week was very exciting to me because it is the last week of the term meaning that is the last week of working only twenty hours. This week was another week of testing burgers, but I also was able to spend a little bit of time working in the lab. while working in the lab was fun it was also quite frustrating since we were having trouble getting the texture of a product quite right. The hardest part about this is that we aren’t quite sure as to what texture the client really wants, nor are we sure if they really know what they wants. But besides this it is difficult because the texture changes overtime the longer it sits which makes pinpointing a texture quite difficult. After spending two hours working on different formulations we decided to put the project back on the shelf until the client is ready to work with us more on it. I am excited to start working 40 hours so I have time to receive more responsibilities which was hard during the month of may with all of my hours being spend working with sensory.

This was another busy week at the FIC. Another sensory test is taking place this time with snack food. Of all the tests I have helped with so far this one is by far my favorite. The snacks being tested I personally think are so good that I hope they start selling them at Costco so I can get a large bag. Also this week a group from Montana visited to work on a project using specialty crops. While I did not have much time to work with them since I was focused on the sensory testing it was fun to see the ideas that they came up with for uses of specialty crops that could be incorporated into school lunches and hospital settings.

This was a very beertastic week at the Food Innovation Center. We spend four days doing sensory testing with consumers on ten different IPA’s. This was a two day test for consumers so people were required to come two separate days to taste five different beers each visit. While getting people to come back for a second day is difficult it is also important because it reduces the fatigue from there being multiple replicates, which still occurs with tasting five beers in a row. Of the tests for consumers this is one that has a pretty good deal since they also received food and coffee after they were done with the test. I am enjoying all the sensory tests that are occurring this week, but it does not allow me very much time to keep up with other projects.

Week seven started off a month full of sensory testing. This week was another burger test which was a nice way to start off all the different sensory tests to come since it was a test that I have already helped with. The real excitement for the week though was the flavors class on Friday. The layout of the class was designed to help create a language between industry members and flavorists so that flavors can be created to fit a companies specific needs, but this can be hard to do if a company is asking for one thing but really wanting another that they are having trouble describing. We smelled a lot of key flavor components such as sweet, medicinal, green, spicy, conifer, burnt, etc. It was interesting that when smelling the different flavors there are different things that your senses pick up when you smell them using your orthonasal passage verses your retronasal passage. Within a natural vanilla flavor there are 300 flavor components that can be found which creates a unique aspect of what creates the signature vanilla flavor. Another important aspect to the class was the aspect of nostalgia where the flavorists wanted to know what the flavors made us think of or if it reminded us of some memory because that is an important aspect of food, is the way it makes you feel and a lot of times having things that remind us of our childhood gives a sense of security during times when life seems unpredictable. Many times people chose familiarity over things that are new or unique because food is an area in peoples lives that they feel as if they can control.

Week six of my internship was all about spring cleaning. With so many employees working independently on a variety of projects keeping things clean and organized is a challenge. The hardest thing to keep track of is the food because you don’t know what ingredients are being used on a project and what has been sitting in the pantry, fridge, and freezer from personal food, and projects that have long since been completed. Organization is one of the areas that many people think can is a task for a day when you are free but at the Food Innovation Center where there are new clients being added regularly and projects going into their second or third stages it is hard to find enough down time to worry about keeping the spices organized. But this week I had set aside time to deep clean the pantry, lab, kitchen and sensory area. While cleaning to this extent can sometimes be slow moving it is also work that is very rewarding because you can visibly see the progress being made. I tend to have a pretty good memory when it comes to the location of items once I know where things are placed and this just helped me even more to keep track of where things are in the kitchen and lab. I also gained a new project this week, while this month will be busy with sensory testing I hope I will be able to also keep up with all the little projects that I acquire.

This week my work mostly surrounded a class for industry members about fruit pomace. The pomace is all the fruit fibers and sugars left after removal of the juice from a fruit. The research on pomace is important because fruit companies normally have to figure out a disposal method of the left over pomace, but pomace can be used in cooking which creates a product high in fiber, antioxidants and an increased fruit flavor. Plus pomace is very cheap so if you use it in place of parts of other ingredients it can reduce some cost while also increasing the nutrient content of the product. There were many lectures that went a long with the class about how to dry pomace, how to begin formulation of a product containing pomace, doing sensory work, product labeling, and shelf life testing. The most interesting thing that I learned, not related to pomace, is that labeling requirements will be changing soon to make serving size more representative to the amount most people would consume. For example beverages instead of having an 8oz serving on the label it will be required to have the entire bottle as the serving size. The reason I find this so interesting is because I feel like once consumers see the nutrition facts for things like soda and sports drinks in terms of the whole bottle it will deter consumers from buying them since the calories and sugar content will be very high. In a way I believe this change could end the era of “super sized” products. Consumers are being much more mindful of what they consume now and wanting to know exactly what they are eating down to a level of knowing every ingredient in a product as well as being aware of quantity. During the class we had the opportunity to create prototypes of muffins and granola bars containing pomace and it was found that people preferred the added pomace for aroma,creating a good fruit flavor and making the product taste cohesive in flavor.

Week four involved a lot of planning for an ideation meeting with a large company that happened on Friday the 22nd. We spent about three hours researching at grocery stores to see what other companies had come up with in the direction that the company we were working with wanted to go. After the research a lot of my time during the week was compiling all of the research we had found into a power point that we could share during the meeting. During the actual ideation meeting we split up into small groups with individuals who joined from their company. It was interesting to see what ideas they liked and which they turned down immediately based on the companies vision, standards and the regulations they wanted to avoid. I learned that every idea you have is important to communicate because while you may think an idea is great they may disagree or in my case during this meeting I had an idea which I thought was mediocre but the other people in my group thought it was so creative that I needed to write a paper on it. The idea I had was that a product could either be a side dish or a soup depending on the water level, so putting various water lines so the product would change depending on the consumers desired end product. For any one who reads this I would love feedback as to whether that actually was a good idea or any thought. I did not think it was very innovative but others thought differently.

This was the busiest week thus far for me at the Food Innovation Center. While in the office most of the week was focused on research. A few upcoming projects being worked on focus heavily on herbs and how the beneficial properties they contain which can help the body. I did not realize just how many herbs there are out there and the insane number of things they claim to help with. One for instance is Bacopa or Brahmi which claims to help memory, stress relief, protects neurons, could possibly benefit those with Alzheimer’s, decrease opioid dependence and reduce swelling. Even though I knew that herbs could have medicinal properties, hearing things like this and just learning about a few of the many herbs out there is amazing. If your looking to learn more about herbs and a good number of the ones there are out there I found mountainroseherbs.com to be very helpful.

For two days this week I was able to attend the Oregon Dairy Industry conference. I found meeting people who work in the dairy industry to be such a great experience. I did not talk to anyone who wasn’t incredibly nice and even though I am only an intern I found that people valued me being there. I had a few people who were talking to my internship coordinator come up to me later on to introduce themselves because they were unable to have a formal introduction to me in specific. I also received opportunities to apply for various jobs and scholarships through the experience. There were also many great speakers at the event. My favorite being a talk done by someone at Oregon Freeze Dry which was about how to set up a company in a way where the employees are put above making money where all employees know how to do every task and there are easy to achieve ways for every employee to move up in their job. There were a lot more highlights from that talk but those were a few of them. I found it very comforting to see so many people who were retired but were still working in the industry because they loved it so much, that really made me feel like I chose the right field of study. To finish off the conference there was a cheese tasting event. Some of the cheeses i had never even heard of before and others that I will need to remember so that I can buy at some point. One of which being Cypress Grove Chevre. Also raclette needs to be seen more regularly like at weddings and such because it is delicious. If you are unaware what this is, it is a Swiss/French dish where a semi-firm cheese is heated and the melted part is scraped off, it goes well on potatoes, pickles, or on bread. For me it was like the more elegant form of cheese fondue.