At the end of October, students visited Foods of North America in Geneva as part of a career trek. FONA is a privately-owned, international company that specializes in devising the flavors in many products consumers find in stores.

Katie Sudler, the community education director at FONA, was the main tour guide on the trek. She talked all about the science behind making a flavor. She also talked about the many career and teaching opportunities the company offers. They accept people with or  without degrees.

“We are willing to help pay for workers’ student tuition,” said Sudler, “We like to have our workers constantly learning and growing.”

The company works with food products, medicine, and beverages, anything that utilizes our senses. The company itself designs flavors for over 200 other companies.

The scientists that spoke to students had degrees in food and nutrition, chemical engineering, and biology. The scientists are called flavorists, and there is a seven year apprenticeship program required to become a certified flavorist.

During the first part of the trek, employees offered students a lot of background knowledge about chemicals and flavors as well a psychological analysis of how people react to flavors, everything from the taste, the smell, the look, the texture, and even how a food sounds when a person bite down on it.

The second part of the trek was a tour of the facility and an overview of what the scientists do on the job, for example, balancing if the company wants to decrease the amount of sugar in one of its products, but they don’t want customers to be turned off by the lack of sweetness.

The third part was a presentation on the anatomy of flavors. They described a bit on they develop a desired feature. A lot of the time, they combine all sorts of different components to get the product.