From nutrition and safety to developing food for space travel, read about the lives of different food scientists! Does this sound like something you would like to do? 

Career

Check out a day in the life of a food scientist.

Watch author J.K. Rowling speak on the benefits of failure and her advice for facing it and turning it to your advantage. Write down something you're afraid of failing at. How can you turn it to your benefit?

Advice

Overcome your fear of failure. 

Get a jump start on what you want do in college or test your interest before you get there by taking a class in food science or nutrition! 

Education

Take a food science or nutrition class.

Food Scientists

Use chemistry, microbiology, engineering, and other sciences to study the principles underlying the processing and deterioration of foods; analyze food content to determine levels of vitamins, fat, sugar, and protein; discover new food sources; research ways to make processed foods safe, palatable, and healthful; and apply food science knowledge to determine best ways to process, package, preserve, store, and distribute food.

Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Investigative

Third Interest High-Point

Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Realistic

Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Conventional

Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Artistic

Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Enterprising

First Interest High-Point

Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Social

Second Interest High-Point

Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed

Food Scientists and Technologists

Agricultural and Food Scientists

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations

Life Scientists

Test new products for flavor, texture, color, nutritional content, and adherence to government and industry standards.

Check raw ingredients for maturity or stability for processing, and finished products for safety, quality, and nutritional value.

Confer with process engineers, plant operators, flavor experts, and packaging and marketing specialists to resolve problems in product development.

Evaluate food processing and storage operations and assist in the development of quality assurance programs for such operations.

Study methods to improve aspects of foods, such as chemical composition, flavor, color, texture, nutritional value, and convenience.

Study the structure and composition of food or the changes foods undergo in storage and processing.

Develop new or improved ways of preserving, processing, packaging, storing, and delivering foods, using knowledge of chemistry, microbiology, and other sciences.

Develop food standards and production specifications, safety and sanitary regulations, and waste management and water supply specifications.

Inspect food processing areas to ensure compliance with government regulations and standards for sanitation, safety, quality, and waste management.

Seek substitutes for harmful or undesirable additives, such as nitrites.

Develop new food items for production, based on consumer feedback.

Stay up to date on new regulations and current events regarding food science by reviewing scientific literature.

Air sampling systems

Amino acid analyzers

Amylographs

Anaerobic growth chambers

Analytical balances

Atomic absorption AA spectrometers

Automatic diluters

Autosamplers

Bacterial identification systems

Batch fryers

Benchtop nephelometers

Biological safety cabinets

Bioreactors

Blast freezers

Carbon dioxide CO2 laboratory incubators

Color difference meters

Colorimeters

Commercial microwave ovens

Computerized calorimeters

Conductivity meters

Coulter counters

Darkfield microscopes

Dehydration equipment

Dejuicers

Desktop computers

Differential refractometers

Digital oscilloscopes

Drum dryers

Dynamic light scattering equipment

Dynamic mechanical analyzers DMA

Electronic laboratory balances

Emulsifiers

Epifluorescence microscopes

Extractors

Fermenting tanks

Food choppers

Food crushers

Food dehydrators

Food mixers

Food slicers

Fourier transform infrared FTIR spectrometers

Fraction collectors

Freeze drying equipment

Fruit presses

Gas chromatographs GC

Gel electrophoresis equipment

Glucose analyzers

Griddles

Grills

Heat exchangers

High pressure liquid chromatograph HPLC equipment

High speed refrigerated centrifuges

Homogenizers

Ice cream freezers

Induction cooktops

Infrared IR spectrometers

Ion chromatographs

Jet cooking systems

Laboratory lasers

Laboratory mechanical convection ovens

Laboratory mills

Laboratory ovens

Laboratory water baths

Laptop computers

Laser colony counters

Macro kjeldahls

Mass spectrometers

Meat grinders

Meat saws

Melting point apparatus

Membrane filtration systems

Micro kjeldahls

Microbial monitoring systems

Microcentrifuges

Muffle furnaces

Nitrogen analyzers

Orbital shaking water baths

Oxygen analyzers

Personal computers

pH indicators

Phase contrast microscopes

Piston filling machines

Plate heat exchangers

Programmable incubators

Pulper finishers

Pulsifiers

Ranges

Reflectance spectrometers

Refrigerated benchtop centrifuges

Retort sterilization equipment

Rheometers

Roasting equipment

Rotary evaporators

Scanning electron microscopes SEM

Scanning plate readers

Specific gravity fat analyzers

Spectrofluorimeters

Spiral platers

Steam autoclaves

Steam blanchers

Food Scientist

Every way you turn, people try to tell you who to be and what to do. that empowers people to the keys to the greener view have been generation of road trippers. the nation interviewing. passions trying to find out who we what do we wanna do with our lives. because every day is so thoughts and people. we went to the Jelly Belly factory. the sweetest woman I've met. they're made of jelly beans, that's nuts. who make Jelly Belly flavors. job is, what's a typical reaction? my husband is an orchestra conductor. and we introduce ourselves or whatever. blah, blah, blah, and and it's like he doesn't exist anymore. >> They all go what, make people's lives a little bit happier. >> For a little bit of time, so to my job in it's own little way. difference in people's lives. >> You should see some of the ones. I started working here, sure but. end up as Belly Flops just because the first time around. we wanted a pizza Jelly Belly. make this really super tasty pizza. flavors in there and stuff. it was just like, so hideous. >> [LAUGH] vomit, for the vomit beans. >> [LAUGH] >> Are you kidding? >> Oh my god, it's so bad. it just gets bad again. >> That's just terrible. >> You got it now, you got it. >> Don't be afraid to make mistakes. of developing new candy products. I would be doing that. when they present themselves. make a vomit jelly. not gonna be needing it for long time. Nuclear Generating Facility. neighborhood in Chicago. violence was by joining the Navy. a 285 year prison sentence. I came from and these battles. a promise to myself and high water, I will get here. in Chicago, the South side of Chicago. to find engineers and certain talent. sat me down I had to take an exam. you get seven minutes to do it. it's not you're not gonna get that done. five questions. and there was a pattern. I got four minutes left. so it became all the way down through. looked me dead in the eye, and 17 year old Deion. the navy don't want people like you. who cheats to go to the military? you figured out their pattern? exactly what the navy wants. >> So the world of nuclear. so imagine fresh out of high school. months, you went from a know-nothing a naval nuclear power plant. Monday through Monday. >> 100 went in, 35 came out. I had 42 people working for carrier at age 19. you're now assigning work to. apart some kind of hydraulic actuator or an asset to anyone and of that knowledge. after you reach all this success and it was seeing this sense of hopelessness. of my time, where I would go just talk to students, and share my story. and there, started teaching at colleges, doing things of that nature. people would lock in, and in your organization? because I told them you're getting ready it has a negative connotation typically. I say, nerds in your school? some of them are, that kid that you would make seem sort of an outcast, a geek? they don't do anything, caused them to think about. see everything you see, they're exposed to the exact same challenges you have, yet somehow, that kid has the strength still do well in school, still survive. with everything you deal with, but still make good grades? do to change that situation? what most kids simply don't want to do. most people to get where you're going, from the people that you know, you're typically used to. break that, and it's a matter of have you worth it, and for me, it was worth it. what advice do you have for the upcoming generations? visual that we give the young folks of, you can survive a week without water? because the human body needs it. if you have not had water in four days, you, I said, what would it take for drink that bottle of water? enough that, though that bottle of water I'm gonna cause you not to go reach it. they're like, there's nothing you can do, is it safe to a certain path you're gonna go down? or you essentially perish, age do to cause you to not go and you will not survive without? to be to get in your brain and leave those books alone? you all have to be that nerd. say, hey man, I know what I need, to somehow talk you out of doing than talking you out of drinking know you need to survive. that's wow. not to just grab that water. that's the message. nemesis to change is the conflict between and how you wanna feel. growth, it's been degrading my life, I'm trying to accomplish. gotten this past year, I didn't. myself to and feel good about myself, this analogy in my head that can actually smeared with geology everywhere. unlike anything I've ever seen before, he won two Pulitzer Prizes. >> Right now, he's about to journey across the globe. >> Aah. >> Chill, chill. >> How are you, are you Paul? >> Hi, Jackie. the University of California. to do with what I'm doing now. lead me on the path to become a reporter. basically riding around on a motorcycle installing walk in freezers, fishing boats as a commercial fisherman. be part of my education. from that point? an accident. environmental biology at UC Santa Barbara. go work on a shrimp boat in the Gulf of in a place called Roswell, New Mexico. it wasn't enough to repair it, so find work. who rented me a room for $25 a week. chance to be a former journalist. at the local paper that'll pay you two of having a college degree. life in a completely different path. to come to where you are right now? after less than a year, and went and I kept coming back to journalism. went to a little bit bigger newspaper, 14 years I've been based overseas. no sort of pre-plotted line, well thought out plan, of just led you down that? a conscious process or happened as a subject of your life? days in the United States. that's been rubbed to much. the power of serendipity in their lives. unexpected and it knocks you off kilter. years from now, you might say wow, have accumulated this in life experience. these Ys in your road and just stayed with a woman who happened to got him a journalism job, and completely changed because of. because a chain broke on his motorcycle. >> Yeah, that is unreal. turned 50 years old and I was like wow, transverse the entire fricking world in off on a self-propelled assignment. anatomically modern of Africa about 50,000 years ago. as a form of pilgrimage, if you will. years by my calculation. head north into the Middle East, into Siberia to Alaska. of the new world. it like to be alive today in the world. and I know this took us a lot of time and which in comparison looks rinky dink. how did that planning process come to be? my talk earlier about serendipity. the way our ancestors did. the passes are frozen up, of the Hindu Kush writing. that's previously been stable, but unanswerable until I get there. into stories around the world. of us see because we fly over them and we don't slow down enough. stories is as important meeting comrade voyagers. all out on the trail. >> Oh my [LAUGH] Paul Salopack. set so you have that security Military's useful in the corporate nuclear world. master it. something to fall back on. that you can connect with anybody. discussion with the geneticist. to be a fairly unfocused background. that I totally agree with. trip is I can define my own perspective, road off of other people. >> I feel like all these but they have so many commonalities. I was calling about than just a research. you should stop trying? the program you just watched. to define their own roads in life. Nation experience in the classroom. I always wanted to be a lawyer. helping me on finding my passion and self-confidence, and find my passion which that I could one day help my niece. a study to determine the impact curriculum on high school students. GPAs increased at students, because of the behaviors and relate to academic success. rise in students' self efficacy. the need to do better, they did better. doing I feel comfortable with expressing you like find yourself really. and to view other student. want to share your story with if you're looking to define your own road, to join the movement. 

The Roadtrippers interview food scientist Elise Benstein at the Jelly Belly factory before speaking with Nuclear Engineer Deon Clark about his rough childhood in South Side Chicago. Later, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek shares his non-linear life experiences.

The Power of Serendipity

Jackie. >> I'm Zachariah, nice to meet you. job is, what's a typical reaction? I think that's pretty cool. we introduce ourselves or whatever, and blah, blah, blah, and develop the new flavors of Jelly Beans and it's like he doesn't exist anymore. >> They're like, what, >> And they just get so excited, I've been here I always enjoy that. behind the whole scene cuz scientists while all the glorious what's that kinda like? and I like to make all this happen, but out there taking all the credit. see candy out there that I've worked on, people's lives a little bit happier for >> It makes all the difference in like you're creating something, and a positive difference in people's lives. going on in the world, good and it makes people happy. in any food science job, classes in high school, or? I wasn't sure what. that I knew were gonna be required. I knew that I liked nutrition, what else can I do? the nutrition background, and I thought, the culinary academy as well, and the sciences together. enough to get the job here. up with new candy products and new people enjoy it, and it's pretty cool. you can get pretty chemical and from conceiving a flavor that might the concept. people rate the different flavors. version of the flavor it is that we wanna because the smallest amount that we can do anywhere from 200 to 400 pounds. >> Yeah, yeah, pretty well ahead of time we're gonna use, so we take that, we go up to the kitchen. it, and then we add the flavors and colors talking about, the big 400 pound kettle. the centers and let them cure overnight is pulled out to firm up the center. engrossing process to build up this shell. do we need to add a little more color, until we get it to where we think oh, we'll see where this goes. the bean to make it presentable, there are several million beans out here. which is really cool, the very beginning when I started >> They would have ended up as belly flops candy does end up as belly flops right the first time around. we wanted a pizza Jelly Belly. this really super tasty pizza, and flavors in there and stuff. it was so hideous. >> And Bertie Bott's Beans, it was like oh, vomit, for the vomit beans. >> So it was a mistake but >> Oh, my God, it's so bad. >> That's a response we want. more it just get bad again. >> That's just terrible. >> He's got it now, he got it. >> Don't be afraid to make mistakes. you need to open to opportunities, when they present themselves. of developing new candy products, I would be doing that. 

Exploration

Failure

Fulfillment

Opportunity

Interview

I had a goal in my mind. I wasn't sure what. that I knew were gonna be required. so that's what my degree is in. else can I do when I have this science I have the nutrition background? I like the creativity aspect of it. the culinary academy as well. the sciences together. enough to get the job here. come up with new candy products and new candy products, and it's like, 

Goals

Elise Benstein Highlight

When you explain to people what your job is, what's the typical reaction? my husband is an orchestra conductor. we introduce ourselves or whatever, blah, blah. jellybeans and new candy products. the 12 years I've been here. >> [SOUND] What's it like to kind of be cuz scientists are usually the ones marketing production's happening? I like to make this all that happen but out there taking all the credit. if you go to the store and on it it's like wow, that's cool. it sounds kinda corny but bit happier for a little time. >> A little bit of time. you're creating something and difference in people's lives. going on in the world so it makes people happy. 

Behind The Scenes

What is the process like, and you could get pretty chemical and what is that process like going from successful to finished product. the concept. have people rate the different flavors. which version of the flavor it is that because the smallest probably anywhere from 200 to 400 pounds. >> It's a CFM kettle. well ahead of time kinda selected the flavor that we are going to formula, and we go up to the kitchen. cook it, and then we add the flavors and which is what I was talking about. we'll deposit the centers and out to firm up the center. process to build up this shell. do we need to add a little more flavor? you know, it's pretty good. then we have to to make it look shiny like this. there's several million beans out here. 

Creating A Jelly Belly

Before working, I guess, in any food science job. classes in high school or- degree in science, I wasn't sure what. that I knew were gonna be required. what else can I do? and I have the nutrition background. I like the creativity aspect of it. the Culinary Academy as well. the sciences together. enough to get the job here and up with new candy products and people enjoy it and it's pretty cool. 

I Had A Goal

I'm able to make all my own test samples, which is really cool. the very beginning when I started really pretty scary. >> It would have ended up as belly flops candy does end up as belly flops. right the first time around. we wanted a pizza jelly belly, and it was super tasty pizza and we were throwing all then when we tasted it, was so hideous. >> It was like, you know, for the vomit bean. >> So, it was a mistake, but >> [LAUGH] Ew. >> I can't. more it just gets bad again. making the worst tasting jelly bean. it made a good skit gag. >> So don't be afraid to make mistakes. you need to be open to opportunities, when they present themselves. of developing new candy products and would be doing that. >> Kind of embrace those new concepts. 

Be Open And Embrace New Challenges

It's always easier to get a job when you have a job. in mind before I switched jobs. until I got something else. for whatever reason, satisfied in this job anymore. there is, you'll know. something will let you know. okay you tell yourself I'm gonna look for exactly what it is right off the bat, that you're gonna move on. are my strengths, what are my weaknesses, to offer, do I need more training? go get more training, great. you can find other ways but I think it a process that you just, for satisfied or happy where you're at. you need to start asking yourself why? order to be happy again at what I'm doing. you can make the plans. have a plan [LAUGH] But, if you don't try, 

Moving Onto The Next Job

Like I say, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do, but kinda follow it. something, that's great. something or you enjoy doing something, when we're working on the vomit bean? supposed to be this, a pizza jelly-belly, make this really super tasty pizza, flavors in there and stuff, and it was like, it's so hideous. vomit, for the vomit theme. it ended up being a success. mistakes and turn them into successes, of making mistakes, and something will take you. work, you might meet somebody or steer you in another direction, and I'm better at this or I really like this. so you have all kinds of time, you're just starting out. 

Don't Be Afraid To Make Mistakes

How do you know you're super passionate about something? know if I'm necessarily real passionate just they know exactly from grade school. it's their everything. you're good at. a passion for something, you would know. I think, right of the bat. >> We get a lot of people that tell us, >> Well, so there's things that you just find yourself that could be it. reality that kicks in too. opportunities out there for that? combine what you enjoy or to make a living that's even better. 

Passion

What Is My Passion?

It's probably really tough nowadays. more difficult, I think. it's a lot tougher out there nowadays. what you do, and and people get a good attitude, attitude will take you a long way. of course, an absolute wonderful thing, people can tell that, you're a good that's gonna really help you a lot. 

Elise Benstein

Food Scientist

Videos

Elise Benstein

Milestones

Education

Career

Career Roadmap

My work combines:

My work combines:

Food

Science

Being Creative

Interviewed By

Potential Possible