It seems to me that much of the work in food science is aimed at helping the food industry: increasing shelf life, safety, and palatability while reducing production costs of industrial foods. Nutrition is focused on helping people by studying the relationship between food and health. One could argue that these two fields are really quite separate.

I would appreciate hearing other opinions from those within both fields.

I think this might be the case with research institutes. When it comes to the food industry the nutritionists and food scientists do collabarative work....

Dear Thomas,

As a person who works in both field, I believe that what you mentioned above is the common mistake which leads us to the gap. If we get into more details, considering shelf life/food safety as an example, we see that the purpose of these topics are to improve the quality of food products. In functional foods industry for instance, the shelf life is improved to to deliver the benefits of what is functional (probiotics for example) to the human body. But how we can make sure of that? How a food scientist should know the proper shelf life if not aware of the needed time for deliverance of the functional compounds to the target organ? This is where the Nutrition - Food Science collaboration is needed.

This is just a small example of why these two field should be related. After all the great Hippocrates said it centuries ago that “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

Regards

Dear Nirali,

Institutions are exactly one of the points. As you mentioned, they should make a solid ground for the collaboration of these two fields. However, this is also true for many universities as well.

Regards

Both (all) groups are ultimately looking at understanding and improving quality - whether it be quality in terms of health benefits or quality in terms of shelf life. Successful products need to demonstrate quality on all fronts, with regard to function, nutrition, shelf life, safety, sustainability (etc etc) as well as organoleptic quality. These are all inter-related (improve nutritional quality and organoleptic quality may change, as might shelf life stability). They cannot be compartmentalised.

It has been know for the two to work together......

Jane Parker

Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences

That is exactly the point Jane.

I am glad to have some one from Reading University in discussion. Because as far as I am concerned, In reading these fields are in close relation with each other.

The bottom line is for better product development and research development, these two fields really need to work with each other, what we unfortunately do not see in many countries/institutions/research groups.

Regards

Possibly methodological approaches to food science are quite different of these used by nutrition: It is needed to look for common approaches in order to develop high nutritional quality foods and not only 'commercial' foodstuffs in agreement with current trends. The problem is who is going to pay for?.

Dear Ana,

If individuals accept that these two fields are and should be related, then methodological approaches will be changed. If such collaboration was vast enough to cover most companies, we did not have "commercial" food stuff that much anymore. The true meaning of the collaboration is to find food products which are both healthy and beneficial for the factory. Because we do not see such collaboration, we have many problems both in industrial aspect and nutritional aspect of making a food product.

As for the payment, nutrition projects have always suffer from lack of fund in most countries. The ones which are actually active get the money from university or governmental sources. Little are collaborating with industry. However, the great source of fund IS the industry. Imagine that as a nutritionist you offer a company with a food product which has less cost of manufacture, health benefit, acceptability among the consumers, novel enough to compete with other companies. Would the company reject your offer? I do not think so. The point is in order to do that the nutritionist needs also to have enough knowledge about both fields and that is where we see the next level of a more bigger gap.

Regards

What about knowledge about nutrition by food technologist?. I think they need to know some human physiology too!.

True that Ana! That is just the other side of the discussion. I just started with the nutritionists. No doubt same is true for food technologists. The point is such collaboration should be established whether from nutritionists or food technologists. However, I believe that the first step should be from nutritionists since they are more in need of fund for their researches. Food technologists can afford their research since they are involved with industry.

I know that lots of nutrition groups closely collaborate with food technologists.

Anyway, this is not the matter. In general, it is not mandatory to have a strict collaboration between these groups: in the medical environment, the former should test the better for groups of population while the latter should assess new products to be tested as required by clinical trials and/or mediacal evidences. Other commitments arise when speaking about commercial interests but....this is another tale...:-)

Dear Maurizio,

Although there are lots of Nutrition groups collaborating with food technologists, there are many that do not. So they also need to start this collaboration.

Well of course it is not "mandatory" to have such collaboration, It is rather "necessary".

I completely agree with the fact that you mentioned above, however, I also believe that nutritionists should not only focus on what is going on in the medical environment. They should have an interdisciplinary look.

From the perspective of the research community I can understand it some aspects of the discussion about disparities between both fields. In industry the activities of food and nutrition scientists always get together because of good food, good life... ;-)

Shayan,

I disagree that all nutrition research groups need to collaborate with food technologists. Humans lived in health for millennia without the food industry, without food technology, without supplements, without "functional foods". The notion that food technology is somehow integral to understanding nutrition, physiology, health, and disease is silly. Obviously food scientists/technologists need to understand nutrition, but I do not believe nutrition scientists need to understand food technology.

Moreover, I have grave concerns that food science, with its greater commercial funding and conflicts of interest, may harm the integrity and independence of nutrition research, which should be funded with transparency by entities such as NIH that have no profit interest in the outcomes.

Dear Tobias,

Research community is exactly where the problem is. Industry involves individuals who always get along well as you said! Good to have someone from industry on the discussion.

Dear Thomas,

It is not about the collaboration of "all" nutritionists. It is about being open to collaborations and looking forward to it. Being just straight minded about one field is against the interdisiplinarity which brings innovation and creativity into the field and I am telling it as both a nutritionist and food scientists.

No doubt that humans lived with out food industry for a long period, but we are not talking about cave mans anymore. Life styles changed, human behaviors changed, and so as the physiological concepts of human body. So if persons involved with food, do not collaborate, the future path will not be so clear or even promising.

What I am trying to imply here is the lack of trust and openness between the researchers of these fields. To be honest, I even feel anger in your sentences. Anger for food science and that is the draw back which many nutritionists have.

I agree that there are conflicts in the industry due to many reasons, but nutritionists are a part of food chain too. They need to play their roles. Industry has fund and resources, nutrition has well designed research. Who can say that a true and healthy collaboration will do harm?

I really hope that we get to a conclusion of seeing more friendship in these two fields.

Regards.