Student gets the taste for personal and professional success with GCU placement
A GCU student has played a key role in the future of food and drink production in Scotland, while also providing herself with inspiration for life beyond University.
Final year BSc (Hons) Food Science student, Chloe Pow, spent twelve weeks on placement with Food and Drink Federation (FDF) Scotland.
Despite having to work from home due to the pandemic, Chloe used her University and personal experience to contribute to the organisation’s Reformulation for Health programme, which is funded by the Scottish Government. The programme’s Reformul8 Challenge Fund provides financial support to food and drink manufacturers to help make products healthier.
Chloe explained more about reformulation and her experience with FDF Scotland. She said: “Reformulation is basically changing up the recipe or ingredients used in a food product to make it healthier for the consumer to eat. The difference reformulation can make towards improving the health credentials of different products is amazing. I was really lucky to get the opportunity to work on this with FDF Scotland through my Programme Lead, Janice Taylor.
For the first six weeks, I worked with one of FDFS’s Reformul8 Fund recipients, Treat Cheats. They’re a chocolate company and I helped to make their chocolate have less sugar, fat, and calories. It was very challenging, especially because I was working from home and didn’t get to see the actual chocolate making process. The overall experience was amazing though, especially getting to learn about new innovative ingredients that help to make these products healthier.”
Chloe’s positive impact wasn’t just limited to Glasgow-based, Treat Cheats. During the second half of her placement, she used her personal skills to go one step further.
She explained: “I help run my husband’s graphic design agency when I’m not at University, so I suggested to Joanne Burns - who’s the Reformulation for Health Manager - that I could use my background to help manufacturers understand the process behind reformulation. I suggested we make fact sheets based on each of FDF Scotland’s eight principles of reformulation, which are; reduce fat, reduce calories, reduce salt, reduce sugar, increase fibre, increase fruit and vegetables, replace ingredients with healthier alternatives, and improve consumer information.
I researched and designed eight individual fact sheets. It ended up that I decided to combine them all together to make a Reformulation Guide, which can now be used by food and drink manufacturers across Scotland.
This will help save FDF Scotland a lot of time because they’re not having to repeatedly go over the same information – it’s something they can give to companies straight away at the start of the process.”
After a busy (but rewarding) three months, Chloe admits that she didn’t expect to be involved in something like this while studying at University.
She said: “I’d never previously considered having a job in reformulation, but I’ve found the whole experience super interesting!
I’m now really excited about my future career and I’m actually thinking of doing a PHD looking at how we can adapt products to make them healthier.”
Joanne Burns, Reformulation for Health Manager at FDF Scotland, said: “It was an absolute pleasure having Chloe work with the Reformulation for Health programme and watching her knowledge and interest in all aspects of reformulation grow. The Reformulation Guide that Chloe developed will be very useful in helping to engage businesses and support them in starting to develop their reformulation plans.
It truly was a perfect combination of her food science knowledge and graphic design skills. I wish Chloe all the very best with what I am sure will be a very exciting and successful future.”
By Ross Clark
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