Two food scientists explain how your snacks get from their labs to the grocery store shelves.

Marcus Brody ’92 spends his days figuring out how to create new foods: A cracker made from legumes. A plant-based cheese. A beverage for those with swallowing disorders.

Brody is a senior food scientist at The National Food Lab, which is hired by companies seeking to bring new products to the market — often ones that satisfy a certain consumer desire, such as lemon flavor or all-natural ingredients. Brody joins a team of people with various specialties, from research chefs and process engineers to those who work in consumer research. “We sit together and try to ideate a new snack,” Brody says.

He is bound by confidentiality agreements not to reveal the brand names of the products he has worked on. “It’s always fun to make something and see it in the grocery store, but I can’t tell anyone,” he says.

Brody’s love of chemistry blossomed during a Colgate summer research program, during which he abandoned his previous career goals and decided to become a chemist. Since completing his PhD at the University of Virginia, he has had a varied career, working in cancer research and cannabis derivatives — and also founding a sparkling wine company — before taking a position at the lab where he now works, in Ithaca, N.Y., six years ago.

He relishes developing a new product or modifying a current one, which involves trying out ingredients such as protein, starch, fat, and emulsifiers; creating prototypes; and, later, visiting the plant where the product will be made to troubleshoot the process. The timeline from development to finished project can take three months to more than a year. Brody has worked on everything from ice cream to CBD-infused beverages.

Creating products without gluten — such as a cracker made from legumes — is an example of the challenges he tackles. “The goal is to make it resemble a wheat cracker but without a beany taste,” he says. Replacing wheat flour with a gluten-free alternative also affects texture. He employs ingredients such as cassava flour and flaxseed meal to improve texture. His team also needs to keep in mind the manufacturability of the dough. A commercial bakery is expected to produce approximately 10,000 crackers a minute.

Brody hopes to counter some of the negative associations people have with processed foods. It takes time to get products from a plant to a grocery store and then to the consumer, and baking or pasteurizing them, for example, “keeps them free from bacteria and maintains their quality,” he explains. Raw milk, for instance, might seem healthy “until you realize it comes from the underside of a cow, which is dirty and can make you sick. Pasteurized milk is much healthier.”

“It’s always fun to make something and see it in the grocery store, but I can’t tell anyone.”

Some of Brody’s most technically difficult work has involved creating meals and beverages for people with dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, which often develops after throat cancer or a stroke. “The patients don’t have the strength to swallow food easily, so it goes down the trachea instead of the esophagus,” Brody explains. “And they aren’t getting enough nutrition because it’s not palatable.” His goal is for the beverage to be thick enough that it won’t enter the airway, but not so thick that it is hard to drink. “Think of drinking gravy,” he says. His team created a beverage with high viscosity, or thickness, but a lower “yield stress” — how much force it takes for the liquid to flow — so it would be pleasant to drink.

For Brody, such work is especially satisfying: “It feels good to make something that is going to make someone’s life better.”

— Jennifer Altmann


How is it possible that every bag of Cheetos tastes exactly the same?

The answer: Food scientists like Kashif Ahmed ’08. He’s worked in many parts of the process, from product formulation to measuring success against competitors. Now the North American lead for competitive quality assurance at PepsiCo, he makes sure the crunch of your favorite chips is the best it can be. “Whatever product it is, we make sure that we do our due diligence to ensure it’s accurate to what the consumer wants and expects,” he says.

Discover what it takes to be a food scientist through the lens of Ahmed’s work:

Learning the Ropes

A chemistry major at Colgate, Ahmed felt like he needed an advanced degree if he wanted to enter a career in a STEM field. When it came time for him to depart the Hill, he veered away from the norm to an area he’d never heard of: food science. “When I was reading about food science, it entailed a lot of the scientific principles and methods that we learned about [at Colgate], just in a more tangible output, i.e., food products or something you can consume at the end.”

While earning his master’s at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ahmed studied the bioactive component curcumin, found in the spice turmeric. He was specifically interested in how to effectively deliver curcumin to the body through emulsions, so consumers could make the most of its health-promoting properties, like anti-inflammation.

‘The Tomato and Beans Group’

Before joining PepsiCo, Ahmed worked in product development at Conagra Brands Inc., known for old-school names like Duncan Hines and recent ones like the plant-based Gardein. What you see at the grocery store are the products resulting from the formulas and components developed by scientists and engineers.

“We were lovingly called ‘The Tomato and Beans Group,’” jokes Ahmed, who helped formulate condiments like ketchup, mustard, and barbecue sauce, as well as some additional canned tomato products. If you’ve ever mixed Rotel into your Crock-Pot queso, you partially have Ahmed to thank.

On to Pepsi

Ahmed’s first partner at PepsiCo in 2013 was the Quaker Man. “That’s when I started my quality assurance journey to create a program where we would do a lot of internal testing of our products to make sure that we could improve the consistency of them from the manufacturing plan,” Ahmed says. In layman’s terms: What improvements can make Quaker products better, and how can they be achieved?

After the company reorganized, Ahmed headed for the Lonestar State to join the Frito-Lay division. Until late 2020, he was the main quality assurance resource supporting North American innovations among brands like Lay’s and Cheetos.

He ensured that the company had the correct specifications and legal documentation for the snacks it produced, with the right numbers and methods used during formulation. Also, from a sensory point of view, he made sure that the finished product met competitive design standards.
For example, if a potato chip is cooking too long and becoming hard in texture, he would ensure the right steps were taken to come up with the proper adjustment to meet the expected standard.

The Snack Food Arms Race

Today, as the North American lead for competitive quality assurance, Ahmed helps Frito-Lay compare its products in the marketplace. The goal is to win in terms of design and other attributes. “If we’re not, [we ask ourselves] ‘What are some of the action plans we need to institute to be able to consistently win against the competition?’”

New versions of existing products also help keep Frito-Lay above the competition. For example, adding the Flamin’ Hot spice and branding to Cheetos and Rold Gold Pretzels has recently been a hit. “Consumers are asking for that type of flavor profile as well, so that also helps with those brands being seen as iconic and winning against competition consistently.”

Crunching the Numbers

There are a few ways Ahmed and his team measure success. Qualitatively, they assess the appearance, texture, and flavor. The process is similar to when you try a new snack food: Are the potato chips a nice golden color? Are they salty enough? How’s the crunch factor? Quantitatively, they look at consumer insights including “overall liking” when comparing Snack A to Snack B. You’ve probably enjoyed one treat that performs consistently well across the board. “When you think of the orange on your fingers, you think of Cheetos, not necessarily another product,” he points out.

The Perks of Being a Food Scientist

With Ahmed’s job, it’s difficult not to get a little snacky. His favorites: “Kettle-cooked chips with that hard bite crunch. In terms of sweet: Grandma’s double chocolate chip cookies; whenever we get to taste test those, I always make sure to take a little extra.”

— Rebecca Docter