They are running test kitchens for some of America's favorite cookbooks, helping small farmers profit from their harvests and opening health and fitness businesses. They're the graduates of New Mexico State University's human nutrition and food science program (HNFS).
Julie Christopher has parlayed a master's degree in food science into a position as assistant director of the test kitchen for Oxmoor House, which publishes cookbooks for "Southern Living" and "Cooking Light" magazines. Christopher returned to her home state of Alabama for the job. I grew up with "Southern Living" and wanted to get into more of a culinary kind of food science.
She tests and evaluates recipes before they're accepted for publication. We test portion size. We take into consideration caloric content. We evaluate the procedure, the difficulty, the appearance.
 |
On the job: Julie Christopher prepares a pancake dish to be photographed for a Southern Living cookbook. Christopher says it's not easy to keep food looking delicious during photography sessions. |
She says many of the recipes call for troubleshooting. If there's a problem with a recipe, I have to figure out how to fix it. If the recipe is gummy, we have to work on it. Low-calorie baked goods are the most difficult.
Cecilia Garcia-Whitehead troubleshoots problems for small farmers and helps them turn their crops into profitable products. She uses her food science degree to guide small producers as they prepare a food for market. There are a lot of people with small family fruit orchards in northern New Mexico, she says. The only way they can hang on to the family farm is to develop value-added products. Many of them make jams and jellies. I help them evaluate the products, test them for safety and point them in the right direction for help in marketing.
Garcia-Whitehead tests these products in a 3,000-square-foot commercial kitchen as part of her position as food science director at Northern New Mexico Community College. The college recently established an associate's degree program in food science, and Garcia-Whitehead is planning the curriculum. The first classes will be held in August 2001.
The kitchen is part of the teaching lab and is also used for local producers and processors to develop value-added products, Garcia-Whitehead says. The students will have the opportunity to work with producers on different levels, such as shelf-life testing and product development. There's a lot of potential here for the students as well as the producers. They can help each other.
Beverly Clayshulte says helping others is the most fulfilling part of her job. She graduated in 1999 with a master's degree in human nutrition. She spends time researching fad diets because, as a licensed nutritionist, she counsels clients who have tried them all. People go on all types of diets, Clayshulte says. Many of them, like this new low-carbohydrate trend, are harmful to their health.
She is part-owner of Inner Balance, a health and fitness business in Las Cruces. She educates people of all ages about healthy eating habits and says many of her clients are children and young adults who are referred by local pediatricians. Kids are very concerned with their self-image, she says. Because they're growing, they need to eat nutritionally sound meals. Dieting at this age can lead to eating disorders. You'd be surprised how many boys as well as girls have eating disorders.
Clayshulte enjoys her work. I really feel like I can make a difference in someone's life. This is what I wanted to do with this degree?it's very satisfying.
For students who are looking for careers that impact families, there's nothing more basic than the study of nutrition and food science.
 |
Career focus:
Associate Professor |
Adequate food is one of the basic needs of life, says Ann Vail, head of NMSU's family and consumer sciences department. We try to enhance quality of life with good nutrition.
Since 1900, NMSU's College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences has offered instruction in home economics. Classes that once focused on the principles of cookery have evolved into the department's human nutrition and food science program.
Vail says it's important that food education not be taught in isolation. As families make resource decisions, as families raise children, even as families find shelter-all of these things impact a family's food choices, she says. We don't teach food exclusively. We teach about it in the context of the family as a whole. This broad context of teaching is what makes our department unique.
Family and consumer sciences is the college's largest department with 337 undergraduate and 47 graduate students. About one-third of those are enrolled in HNFS. The three options in the program's curriculum-dietetics, pre-health and food science-are challenging, because they're heavily based in the sciences. Students receive field experience in hospitals, clinics and community settings, and many go to work for the same companies upon graduation.
Dietetics is the most popular of the program's options, says Wanda Morgan, an associate professor who teaches dietetics and pre-health classes. Students in dietetics learn to apply the science of nutrition to the diet. Graduates have the opportunity to become registered dietitians or licensed nutritionists. Many work in hospitals and other health care facilities. They get experience in required dietetic internships all over the country: Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Albu-querque. But the internships are not easy to come by.
The national average of interns accepted from dietetic programs is 50 percent, Morgan says. Nine out of 10 of our students were accepted into top-notch programs this year.
In addition to being a nutritional scientist, Morgan is a certified diabetes educator. Her students have worked on diabetes research projects-some done in the students' home countries. One student worked with diabetic children in Kuwait, and others have conducted research with pregnant women in Mexico and Oman. We've seeded the world with our graduates, Morgan says. We're so proud of them and the work they're doing.
Along with dietetics, Professor Ann Bock also teaches pre-health classes. She's concerned that students interested in studying nutrition are sometimes discouraged by the science courses. The chemistry and biology classes needed for this degree scare a lot of people, she says. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. If students don't get the science and math skills they need in high school, there are programs on campus that can help.
The pre-health option offers all the classes required for students to pursue medical, dental and pharmacy degrees or health care professions, such as physical therapy and occupational therapy. Bock says placing graduates, especially bilingual graduates, in jobs is easy, because there aren't enough graduates for the jobs available. She says students suited for careers in nutrition must have a strong desire to work with people.
They need to like to put the pieces of the puzzle together, because virtually everything in health care is a puzzle, Bock says. You have to figure out how nutrition can help.
 |
Picture the pyramid: Graduate Beverly Clayshulte uses sample serving portions and the Food Guide Pyramid to teach clients about proper nutrition. |
Bock has made inroads into distance education and has taught several classes using World Wide Web-based technology. Her current advanced nutrition class is held entirely on the Web. This works well for students who work, especially for our graduate students who may have full-time jobs, Bock says. They can do their lessons at 2 a.m., if that's what's convenient for them. Distance education offers an alternative for everyone, particularly those who are underserved in our state.
Bock says distance education can be more effective than traditional classes. Students are forced to have more interaction. They can't be bystanders until test time in these classes, she says. I get 10 to 25 times more interaction with the students when I do a strictly online class.
Bock says these classes have worked well when she travels. I don't have to cancel class, she says. I run chat sessions, answer e-mail from students and grade papers from locations all over the country.
Bock posts assignments and due dates online, and chat room sessions are scheduled weekly. During a recent sabbatical spent at Purdue University, Bock taught a food service management class on the Web to students at NMSU and Purdue. Laura Fernandez, a senior in dietetics, took the online class.
It was great because you could be at home in your pajamas during class, and it was so interesting to have opinions and collaboration from students at two universities, Fernandez says. It was easy to reach Dr. Bock through e-mail and so convenient to complete assignments on a more flexible schedule.
Fernandez has a culinary degree and worked as a chef for six years before deciding to pursue a nutrition degree to complement her culinary skills. Fernandez shared what she's learned with a radio audience on a weekly nutrition/fitness segment during the popular Oye Como Va radio program in Las Cruces. She says the audience responded well to the question-and-answer call-in part of the program.
I can help people with the information I provide, Fernandez says. Ultimately, what I want to do is open a lifestyle management company.
Lisa McKee, an associate professor of food science, is always on the lookout for job opportunities for her students. Food science graduates work in a variety of positions, including product development, food engineering, quality control, quality assurance, marketing and sensory analysis.
I don't teach people to cook, McKee says. This is a science, and most people don't think about how food gets from the tree to the table. I teach all of that.
Food science classes are about the basic chemistry of food and include education in food preservation, food safety, food microbiology and meal management. In one class, McKee has students select and research holidays in different cultures for a class demonstration. They decorate the tables and classroom and serve foods traditionally associated with the holiday. Some unusual celebrations have included Korean Ancestors Day and Hawaii's King Kamehameha Day.
In her experimental foods class, students create and test a new food product using a base ingredient assigned by McKee. Raspberries were the base food this year. Students developed raspberry marinade for meat, raspberry-filled cookies, raspberry crepes, raspberry butter and raspberry-coated popcorn.
McKee has helped students land jobs in food science and food technology. As long as there's food, McKee says, there will be jobs in the food industry.