What is a Food Scientist?
In short, food scientists study the science of food (think chemistry, microbiology, statistics, etc.) and apply it to make food safe, tasty, and consistent.
Crispy potato chips, perfectly melty cheese, and your favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor? All possible because food scientists work to make those products not only delicious, but stable, scalable, and safe.
And food scientists do much more than just make food taste great. They help make food more accessible, ensure its longevity, and reduce waste. They often work to improve nutritional value and can even help develop products that address global health concerns. In a world with growing populations and complex global supply chains, food scientists can play a key role in creating sustainable, nutritious food systems that can support the future of our planet.
You’ll find food scientists working across a wide range of roles. Most notably— product development, quality assurance, academia & research, and sensory.
Let’s break those down—
Types of Food Scientists
Product Development (AKA Research & Development, R&D)
TL;DR: develops products to be made, sold, and loved.
a quick personal story
Back in high school, I met one of the people who helped create Cool Ranch Doritos. This was when I first learned that food scientists exist, and I knew immediately I wanted to do what he did: create innovative and delicious foods that end up in the hands of thousands (or millions! or billions!) of people.
That’s essentially what product developers do. Given a concept — maybe it’s a ranch-flavored tortilla chip, a cookie that stays chewy for months, or a beefy soft taco destined for drive-thru windows — they use food science, processing knowledge, and ingredient functionality to bring it to life. Broadly, that means researching ingredients, developing and testing formulas, and scaling recipes up to be made in mass quantities.
Quality Assurance (AKA QA)
TL;DR: makes sure the products you buy are safe, consistent, and enjoyable.
QA is another very common — and critical — areas food scientists work in. It is exactly what it sounds like: assuring that the quality of food products meets specific standards. That includes internal company standards and regulations set by governing bodies, like the FDA in the U.S.
Think:
→ is this safe to eat? does it taste, look, and smell the way it should?
→ is it free from metal or other physical contaminants? (see also: are our machines being maintained properly? is the product going through a metal detector?)
→ are factory surfaces testing negative for microbiological contaminants like E. coli or Listeria? (see also: is everyone following proper hygiene and sanitation protocols?)
→ does this chocolate chip cookie have the right number of chips?
→ is this juice the right color? the right acidity?
The list goes on — and it looks different depending on the product or industry. But nitty gritty details aside, QA is all about making sure the final product a consumer buys is safe, consistent, and exactly what it’s expected to be.
Academia & Research
TL;DR: Teaches food science and uncovers new knowledge to advance the field.
Like any field, food science needs people to both teach it and push it forward. Some food scientists take this path — often with an advanced degree or one in progress — working as professors, researchers, or both.
These are the folks educating future food scientists and diving deep into the big (and small) questions about food. Their research helps shape the principles the rest of us apply in our everyday work — whether it’s developing new products, writing regulations, or troubleshooting a faulty batch of ice cream.
Spend a few minutes scrolling through the Journal of Food Science and you’ll see just how wide the net is cast when it comes to what’s being studied. A few examples:
- Understanding Kombucha Tea Fermentation (Understanding Kombucha Tea Fermentation: A Review)
- Chemistry of Deep-Fat Frying Oils (Chemistry of Deep‐Fat Frying Oils)
- Using biopolymer coatings to extend tomato shelf life (https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1750-3841.70179)
- Consumers’ attitudes toward 3D-printed food (https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1750-3841.70198)
The topics are wildly varied, but the goal is the same: to grow the body of science-backed knowledge that helps everyone in the food system make smarter, safer, and more creative choices.
Sensory
TL;DR: Studies how food looks, smells, feels, sounds, and (of course) tastes.
If you’ve ever wondered how a company decides whether a new cereal is just crunchy enough or whether people can tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke — that’s sensory science at work.
In sensory, data is king. Sensory scientists design experiments to measure how people perceive food using all five senses. They use trained panels (folks who can detect and describe even the subtlest differences in flavor and texture) and consumer panels (regular people giving honest love-it or hate-it reactions) and analyze results to make meaningful decisions. This data helps guide product development, quality control, marketing decisions — pretty much every part of making and selling food.
Want to prove your new coconut milk ice cream will wow consumers as much as the dairy-based original? A sensory scientist can help with that. Trying to figure out what makes one brand of potato chips better than another? Sensory can help you break it down into crispness, saltiness, flavor intensity, and overall liking.
Sensory is part science, part psychology, and part art — all wrapped up in a lot of tiny sample cups.
And beyond that… the list kind of never ends.
Food science is a broad field, and not every job fits neatly into a box. You’ll also find food scientists working in regulatory roles (think FDA or USDA), technical sales, culinary science (hi, research chefs!), consulting, entrepreneurship, and even food engineering. Basically — if it touches food and involves science, there’s probably a food scientist behind it.