The Engine of The New New Zealand

Food technology

Food technology. It’s not just about eating.

It’s about the planet Mars. And creating new high-tech packaging. Developing foods consumers want. And food that will help feed the world’s booming population.

Developing new foods and better ways to manufacture safe, tasty foods is what food technology is all about.

It could be for astronauts on the first mission to Mars or nine-to-five workers, sitting at a desk all day; or people needing good nutrition in the Third World. It’s about creating healthier, more interesting and efficient (oh, and did we mention tasty?!) foods that’ll help humans live longer and more healthily?

That’s your job!

Find out more about what career you might have, and how you can do it too.

About food technology

Chutney you can see. Will you take the next step?

Food technology is about much more than growing/producing products. It’s about adding value.

New Zealand has always been known for its food.

Back when we were first settled it was known for its traditional meat products and later, our fresh fruit and vegetables. Today New Zealand’s food industry is worth $34 billion and earns around 50% of our export income.

If you grow apples, which you want to sell it in a supermarket, you have hundreds, possibly thousands of international competitors. If you create a new fruit chutney with your fruit that gives the consumer the powers of invisibility, you suddenly leave your competition in the dust. And you can charge a fortune.

Well, even if, more realistically, your fruit chutney is totally organic and natural, but lasts for longer than other chutneys, that still gives you an advantage, and the added value means you can, indeed, charge more for your product. That’s good for your bank balance, and the New Zealand economy.

The official summary is that food technology is about having an in-depth knowledge of raw foods and how they can be handled, processed and/or packaged to provide consumers with safe, convenient, nutritious end products.

Or you can work on new consumer products, new ways of freezing and preserving food, or natural alternatives to additives. And you get to work on your own ideas in your last few years.

Invisibility chutney – here we come!

History of food technology

Humans have been manipulating and creating new food sources for thousands of years. Whether through cooking, preserving with salt and spices or ‘domesticating’ crops like rice, we’ve been trying to find new ways of feeding ourselves more efficiently.

Louis Pasteur. He should look happier. He potentially saved millions of lives by inventing pasteurisation and providing the basis of modern preventative medicine.

But it really is in the last hundred years, that food technology as we know it was developed. Processes like the invention of canning in 1810, pasteurisation and refrigeration have revolutionised the provision of food to the world.

With the population of the world increasing, the need to develop new types of food, or ways of producing or processing existing food, has become even more urgent. People are also becoming more health conscious, more aware of nutrition and diet and the affect it has on their quality (and longevity) of life.

Nicolas Appert’s development in 1810 of the canning process was a decisive event, although at the time he wasn’t aware at the time of what an amazing impact it would have on being able to store food.

In 1864, another trailblazer was Louis Pasteur. You might know about his work with milk, we owe the fact that we can keep milk for a week or so down to the process of pasteurisation, which he invented. He developed a process of heating milk and milk products to destroy food spoilage and disease-producing organisms, But his first research project was one of the first scientific-based projects on food technology and looked at how to avoid spoilage of wine. Although he focussed on food, as a result of his research Pasteur became the pioneer into bacteriology and of modern preventive medicine.

Why food tech is awesome

What career will I have?

If you want to spend time coming up with new taste sensations, or new ways of making safe and nutritious foods on an industrial scale, consider becoming a food technologist, food engineer or food scientist.

As a food technologist, you could create new products from the raw ingredients produced on the land or improve the operations and processes to manufacture these products.

Massey graduates have gone on to do a huge variety of things:

Ian Williams and Anders Warn used their food tech skills and experience to invent the first home-brewing machine in the world – the WilliamsWarn. Dick Hubbard started up a cereal company that is now one of New Zealand’s largest. The Operations Manager of Charlies and Phoenix drinks, now on the board of Charlie’s juices, is a Massey grad.  Emerald Foods produces brands including New Zealand Natural – an ice-cream company with outlets in countries all around the world. International companies like Unilever have come to New Zealand to headhunt our Massey Food Tech grads. Many grads have even set up their own successful food companies!

It’s a really exciting area, that’s constantly expanding and today you will find Massey graduates in almost every area of the New Zealand food industry.

How you can do it too

Do you love food? Interested in health issues? Do you have a bit of an entrepreneurial streak, a healthy dose of creativity, but enjoy the sciences as well?

If you’re answering yes to those questions, food technology would be a great career for you.

A good start is to look at studying science at school.

To study food technology, you’ll need to achieve 16 or more credits at NCEA Level 3 in physics, mathematics (with calculus) and 14 more credits at NCEA Level 3 in chemistry.

Degree options

The  Bachelor of Food Technology at Massey University is one of the most well-regarded food-related qualifications in New Zealand.

If accepted, you will spend lots of time doing the theory, but lots of time doing the practical as well. In fact throughout the course you’ll spend 900 hours in approved vacation employment, which will give you some great experience. It is a four-year degree. In the fourth year you get to complete a research or development project that is based on specific needs of the food industry, producing a product and packaging that you develop in a small group.

There are two majors to choose from under the Bachelor of Food Technology. You are not locked into the major from the first day you enrol, you can change at any time up to half way through your third year. The majors are:

• Food Product Technology
• Food Process Engineering

After getting a bit of experience – the world is your oyster! (or your organic olive oil, or your new form of zero calorie premium organic low-fat icecream that you invent and makes you a multi-millionaire in America).

Find out why Massey is the leading university for all things food. Or get in touch with us if you have more questions.

Why Massey?

The alchemy of brewing your own pale ale!

The best place to study food technology is, of course, Massey! We think the unashamable plug for Massey is well deserved. We’re New Zealand’s leading university for all things food. Full stop.

When it comes to food technology, Massey knows its stuff. We’ve been teaching in this area for 50 years and were the first in the world to offer a Food Product Development major.

Massey University is one of only a handful of universities outside of the Americas that has a food technology degree recognised by the US-based Institute of Food Technologists (IFT).

Our 1800 graduates are the people who have built and are leading New Zealand’s food industry.

If you are into the idea of learning more about brewing like the guys who started up WilliamsWarn, at Massey we’ve got New Zealand’s only university-based microbrewery (on the Manawatu campus). We have a food processing pilot plant where you can learn how they make things like those processed snacks you eat while you’re doing your homework.

Relevant

Our students have used the microbrewery and food processing pilot plant to produce a gluten-free beer, a beer for women and a spiced beer. Our students’ fourth year projects are all highly relevant to the New Zealand food industry, because they themselves sponsored the projects!

You can help develop healthier foods that are good for people with different nutritional needs – like children, young adults or  old people.  Recent successful projects at Massey completed by our final year students have included developing low sugar dairy products, yoghurts with more probiotics and even zero fat ice cream!

You might even help develop new food products that win international awards. Like the students that worked with Heilala Vanilla, a vanilla bean producer in Tauranga, to develop a process to produce a vanilla extract and also developed their award winning vanilla bean paste and vanilla syrup.

The world is running short of food, Massey students are looking at ways of producing healthy foods from new protein sources such as legumes. Massey fourth year students have developed and produced in the food processing pilot plot healthy yummy and crunchy snacks (like puffed corn snacks) which taste great.

The Bachelor of Food Technology  is really practical. We have strong relationships with the industry – like Fonterra, Heinz Watties and Zespri for instance. So if you did some work in the kiwifruit area during your study, you’ll get to spend time working with the growers and with Zespri helping them come up with relevant, practical solutions to product development and marketing. That is really valuable when you are looking for a job – and that’s what counts!

This work will see you working with production, technical and marketing managers, helping them to come up with relevant and practical solutions to product development, manufacturing and marketing, all which will help the company to grow, export and to support their local community with employment.

This is really valuable when you are looking for a job and that’s what counts!