A brief history of U of G’s tastiest department
Everybody knows about food, but no one knows more about food than the University of Guelph’s Food Science Department. This leading food research group focuses on the chemistry, physics, and biology of food as well as the development of food processing technology.
Sept. 29, 2018 marks a milestone as the Food Science Department celebrates its 50th anniversary. To mark the occasion, The Ontarion is shedding some light on the past, present, and future of this innovative and prolific segment of the U of G community.
Our story begins in the 1880s, when cheese was Ontario’s largest export to England — third only to lumber and fur. And by cheese, I mean cheddar cheese. Ontario exported young cheddar, medium cheddar, old cheddar — what I’m trying to say here is Britain liked cheddar and we exported a lot of it.
Because of how important cheddar production was to the economic development of Canada, universities across the country, including U of G, began to form dairy science departments. This is why Food Science is housed in a building that reads “Dairy Building” over what are probably the heaviest doors on the U of G campus.
Photo by Mirali Almaula
During the dairy department days of Food Science in 1893, in addition to hosting in-class cheese technology courses, educators travelled by horse and buggy to nearby towns to train cheesemakers in small dairies about cheese creation and cheese technology (i.e. the tools used to make cheese).
When the roaring ’20s rushed in and the Canadian wheat market boomed, interest in cheese waned, but the cheese industry was still sustained by wartime demand.
As the 1960s approached, the interest in food science increased and the need for cheese as an export decreased. In response, dairy science at U of G branched out to research other kind of foods. In 1968, the Food Science Department was born, researching products ranging from meat to vegetables to grain.
A lot has changed since the days of horse-drawn cheese-making classes. Since then, U of G’s Food Science Department has become a major player in food research throughout the world.
The Ontarion spoke to Arthur Hill, department chair and cheese production researcher, to gain a better understanding of the Food Science Department. Hill completed his B.Sc. in Agriculture with a specialization in Dairy Science (1978) as well as his M.Sc. (1982) and PhD (1986) in Food Science at U of G. His research relates to dairy science and technology, especially cheese science and safety, while his current projects are the creation of a Food Formulation laboratory and renovation of the Food Processing Pilot Plants.
Photo by Ariana Longley
Hill detailed three scientific advances during the Food Science Department’s 50-year history that he views as having major significance for the food industry.
The first advancement came from Everett Biggs in 1966. Prior to the broadening of the Dairy Science Department, Biggs developed a device known as the Infrared Milk Analyzer, which could analyze the protein and fat composition of multiple milk samples at rapid speeds.
According to Hill, this kind of “analysis would take hours or days and now could be accomplished in 50 seconds.” Now, the process is almost instantaneous, Hill added as he cheerfully snapped his fingers.
For those of you who only think about milk when there’s not enough of it to pour over your cereal, this may not sound like a big deal. But for the dairy farmers who could now send their milk samples in to be analyzed, this meant they could figure out what exactly their milk was made of and the quality of their product within a reasonable timeframe. This technology was commercialized in 1966 in the world’s first Central Milk Testing Laboratory, which tested (and still does) milk samples from across Ontario.
The second advancement Hill shared was in probiotic research. “Probiotics” is an umbrella term that refers to bacteria that are healthy to consume for humans and other animals.
The Food Science Department has advanced the knowledge of probiotics greatly. One notable researcher in this area is Mansell Griffiths.
Hill explained that “Dr. Griffiths found that part of the health effects [of probiotics] were that [the small protein fragments they produced] prevented pathogenic bacteria [like E. coli] from embedding themselves in the gut [and stopped them] from producing illness [in humans].”
Probiotics are now commonly advertised on all kinds of items in the grocery store and health store aisles. Keeping with the dairy theme, they can often be found in dairy products, including cheese, yogurt, and kefir.
For the third advancement, we flash forward to 2014, where we stumble upon a technological innovation made to save the candy apple market after a listeria outbreak caused retail sales to crash.
According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, between the years of 1998 and 2012, more cases of food poisoning came from eating vegetables and fruits than from eating meat. Estimates show that almost half of foodborne illnesses were a result of produce, while only 22 per cent were linked to meat and poultry.
The reason for these perhaps unexpected statistics is that the process of cooking meat kills a lot of harmful bacteria that are present on the meat’s surface. But, harmful bacteria also live on produce. While rinsing off your produce will wash off most of the dirt and pesticides that may be present, it doesn’t wash off the harmful bacteria. So, cases of foodborne illness due to produce are greater than cases caused by meat because most people aren’t in the habit of boiling every apple they eat.
Armed with this information, in response to the candy apple/listeria crisis, Keith Warriner and his team developed a decontamination system for fruits and vegetables. This system has now been adopted throughout the produce industry and helped to revive the candy apple market.
“In broad terms,” said Hill, “[Our research has made us] globally recognized in pretty much every area of food.”
And with that global recognition, U of G’s Food Science Department has branched out even further with their creation of the Guelph Food Innovation Centre (GFIC) in 2016. While the Food Science Department itself focuses on the science behind food, the GFIC works on product development and helping companies figure out which methods work best for developing the products they want to make.
Hill describes the GFIC as “an interface between industry and the very extensive expertise that’s here [in the Food Science Department].”
As of yet, the GFIC has seen abundant success in reaching companies. “We’ve almost done zero promotion,” Hill said, “but we can’t keep up [with all the demand for the Centre’s services].”
In terms of the future of the Food Science Department, Hill points to the Department’s uniqueness, which is their “focus on food.”
“We’re going to keep doing what we’ve always done. Everything we do relates to food while many food science departments have merged to become food and nutrition or food and agriculture,” said Hill. “We’ve added a new program in food industry management and are looking to add a minor in Pet Food. So I think there’s going to be an increase in need for continuing development and research in all areas of food science.”
To celebrate the Food Science Department’s 50th anniversary, the department is holding an Open House Reception on Saturday, Sept. 29. The reception will include tours of the facility and samples of the frying cheese Hill made with his colleagues.
Photos by Ariana Longley
Feature photo by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion