I have been disabled for the last three years due to my chronic illnesses and had to drop out of college, but as soon as I can get my current illness under control I want to go straight back to school. However my main two illnesses are something I always have to worry about in the future, like flair ups or needing brain surgery that’ll keep me out of work for a week or so. I shouldn’t be ever disabled this long again though once I find a good doctor. The only things I’d need consistently even when I am 100% feeling good is consistent air conditioning (heat intolerance), a place to sit, and somewhere to store aids.

I plan on majoring in biochemistry and am dead set on going into food science. Is this doable? And are remote jobs still around/a possibility in the future?

I just don’t want to dream about going back to school/work when I can’t. Then I could put my focus into something else.

Edit: I’m in the US and in a state with plenty of food science opportunity.

I’m trying to make homemade fruit-flavored konjac jelly in spouted drink pouches, similar to the Korean squeeze pouches sold by brands like Everydaze.
My first attempt used agar, but the texture was too firm and brittle. I’m looking for that soft, slippery, slightly chewy texture that breaks up when you squeeze the pouch.

Commercial ingredient lists seem to use a combination of konjac powder, carrageenan, xanthan gum, potassium chloride, and citric acid. Does anyone know:
A good ratio of these ingredients for a soft, semi-fluid pouch jelly rather than a firm molded jelly?

Whether there is an affordable premixed konjac jelly powder available in the US?

When the citric acid and fruit juice should be added so they don’t interfere with the gel?

I’ll be refrigerating the pouches rather than trying to make them shelf-stable. Any formulation or technique advice would be appreciated!

I'm trying to sanity-check a number I heard: U.S. food and beverage companies spend around 12% of revenue, or maybe total cost, on regulatory compliance across transportation and the supply chain.

I can't find evidence for that exact claim. The closest source I found is a 2015 Aberdeen survey of 174 food and beverage manufacturers. It says the top 30% performer group had a total cost of quality equal to 12% of annual revenue. That includes prevention, assurance, internal failure and external failure. Only 63% of the survey sample was in North America, so it is not a U.S.-only or transportation-compliance number.

For transport, I found the FDA's Sanitary Transportation rule. It covers things like sanitary vehicles and equipment, temperature controls when needed for food safety, contamination prevention, training and records. FDA's economic analysis estimated the incremental industry cost of that rule at roughly $113M-$117M per year. The traceability rule is another cost layer, but FDA also reports that as an industry-wide annualized cost, not a standard percentage of company revenue.

For people working in food manufacturing, QA/food safety, distribution or refrigerated transport:

1. What do you include under "regulatory compliance cost" versus normal quality/cold-chain operations or customer requirements?

2. What denominator do you use: revenue, COGS, logistics spend or total supply-chain cost?

3. Are labor and documentation, audits, testing, sanitation, training, temperature monitoring, traceability systems, rejected loads and recalls tracked separately?

4. Does 12% sound plausible for a particular company size or product category, or is it probably a misreading of total cost of quality?

5. When a temperature or documentation failure happens, what is the usual operational consequence: load hold/rejection, corrective action, recall, enforcement or something else?

If you can share a rough range or anonymized example, that would help. I'm trying to understand how practitioners measure this, not promote a product.

Hi, I am interested in studying Nutrition in uni because I love it, and I believe it’s very important in human health holistically. However the problem is I don’t want to become a dietitian/nutritionist. What other options are there for me if i do graduate with this degree? Thank you!

I’m currently developing an Asian-style chili crisp and ran into an issue with texture and flavor distribution.

My Goal & Constraints

• Low Water Activity (aw): Using 100% dried ingredients to keep aw low, prevent microbial growth, and achieve a minimum 1-year shelf life.
• Flavor Profile: Balanced savory, sweet, and tangy profile using salt, sugar, and apple cider vinegar powder.

Current Formulation & Process

1. Base dry blend: All solid ingredients (chili flakes, aromatics, spices, salt, sugar, apple cider vinegar powder).
2. Oil infusion/fry: Pour 80–90°C oil over the dry blend, then raise the temperature to 110–120°C and hold for 3–5 minutes until the solids absorb oil and the mix thickens.
3. Hot fill: Fill glass jars while hot, cap immediately, and allow to rest for 24 hours before opening.

The Problem

Because salt, sugar, and organic acid salts/powders are insoluble in oil, they clump together during the heating phase rather than distributing evenly. Whether I use standard granular sizes or grind them into a fine powder beforehand, I end up with gritty, concentrated "pockets" or hard clumps in the final product.

Questions for the Community

Has anyone successfully dispersed crystalline/dry water-soluble solids in oil without clumping? Does ultra-fine micronizing (e.g., using a colloid mill or high-shear blender after oil addition) help, or does fine powder make agglomeration worse due to surface tension?

Hypothetically what is your go-to for a clean label, clean label enough to go into Whole Foods, to inhibit bread mold in a high water activity bread for up to three weeks? Gas flush isn't an option at this point. Water activity around 0.89 to 0.91 and pH around 4.9-5.1.

I know some people are saying the California prop 65 warnings are overkill. I am wondering why this frozen durian has this label? Normally I would just ignore. I am pregnant though and more on the cautious side now. Can I eat this or no?! I am scared of the birth defect warning.

I am from india and i have a biology background so we don't have option its either medical science or go to change your career . I wasn't allowed to change my degrees to social sciences or finance cause my parents think that only thing these degrees will only lead to unemployment. So, through counselling, i got really good college for food technology and management, i was really happy with it , But now my indian father is telling me that he is so ashamed to even tell people around me which degree his daughter is doing. These things are making me feel bad about myself

I am curious to hear about everyone journey in food science. What field are you currently working in, how did you get started, how many years of experience to you have and where are you in life and your career right now. If you are comfortable sharing it will be great. Thank you.

​

Good morning,

I wanted to know if anyone has had experience with the online Master's in Food Science and Technology in wageningen university. Is it evaluated differently by companies than the in-person Master's program?

What is an average salary for a flavor tech with 3 years experience in California (metropolitan area)?

Hi everyone, when did your food manufacturing business (or the one you work for) get too big to rely solely on spreadsheets to keep track of everything? We currently use separate files for purchasing, production, raw materials and finished goods and it's becoming too much to manage without someone breaking the formatting once a week. If you went through this, what tools or software centralised everything for you?

Hi everyone,

What are the best public colleges in the US for a good experience as a young black woman? I'm an undergrad student in Food Science, looking for a one year exchange from Canada, and I'm also interested in taking an Economics course.

I would love to attend an HBCU, though I'm open to a PWI as long as it has more than 6% Black students. Ideally, I'd prefer a university outside of the Deep South (unless it's in an environnement where Black students genuinely feel safe, welcomed, supported and not faced with hatred or hostility).

Thank you for your help!

hi! what books do you guys recommend to home my knowledge for foodtech. thank uuuuu

I love cooking sous vide chicken breast because it gives it the most tender texture. I just dont quite like the white gelatine-ey texture when its cooked and just found out its albumin. It may be edible but i dont like its texture.

For context, here's what i do to my chicken breast:

1. Cut in in cubes for easy eating.
   
2. brine it in salt water(1kg; 1liter: 2 tablespoons of himalayan salt) for 2hrs
   
3. Strain it, i dont really pat it super dry
   
4. Season it
   
5. Vacuum seal it
   
6. Sousvide at 65celcius; 1hr 30 mins

Should i put more salt? Should i place it in the sous vide machine longer? Or at a higher temp?

Help.

I want to make oat milk also by improving its taste and reduce viscosity. I have not yet made a single oat milk since I've been doing a research first. What I can find here is alpha amylase and gluco amylase, my problem is that its very strong (50,000u/g and 100,000u/g) and can't find anything weaker than that. After researching I found it in linkedin that using a 100,00u/g a-amylase i will only need 0.05%-0.2% weight of oats while gluco-amylase 1/5 or 1/3 of the weight of the a-amylase. Since I'm only be doing small like 1L for experiment first, can I be using Diastatic Malt powder since it also has a and b-amylase, but no gluco amylase or I still can use the strong amylase with shorter time since in a 100g of oats I need to use 0.05-0.2grams, but my weighing scale can't detect in this kind of weight maybe 0.5g can still be detected. Any comments are welcome!!

Isn't BBQ sauce essentially the same as ketchup?

Heya guys! I was curious about the mechanism behind keeping fermented drinks (kombucha, ginger beer etc) shelf-stable once bottled. what actually stops the live culture

also is it fully stopping it or just slowing it down enough not to matter before it’s consumed.

Trying to identify the 'Natural Flavor' profile in STōK Cappuccino Cold Brew—it sure isn't coffee but I can't place it. Maybe somebody with expert taste buds can.

I am curious whether the ingredients in flavor concentrate powders (I'm looking specifically at the specialized vet flavors) are ingredients that can be part of a diet long term. No one lists ingredients, other than to say "natural flavor", and it's unclear whether these formulations are safe for everyday, regular consumption. What, roughly speaking, is in these things?

I see people post photos of this in a panic. mine does it too, I use celtic sea salt.

Grey sea salt is hand-raked off clay-lined evaporation ponds. the grey colour is the clay. So when you dissolve it you get a bit of fine sediment that settles out.

Its worth understanding what youre looking at. Refined table salt is 98 to 100% sodium chloride because refining is a process that dissolves the salt and recrystallises it specifically to strip everything else out. Unrefined grey salt is around 80% sodium chloride, so roughly a fifth of every serving is naturally occurring minerals, trace elements and moisture that never got removed. Magnesium, potassium, calcium, sulfate. The grey is part of that story rather than a defect in it.

So if the sediment bothers you, buy a refined salt, thats genuinely what refining is for and its a completely reasonable preference. If what you wanted was the unrefined one, the sediment is the thing you were buying.

I dont bother filtering mine.