Hello, this is Monica Reinagle.

Welcome to another episode of the Nutrition Diva Podcast.

Today I'm very excited to introduce you to Annette Hotenstein, who is a registered dietician,

as well as a sensory scientist. Now Annette is the host of a new podcast called The Food Somalier, and I've asked her to join me to talk to us a little bit more about her work

and to find out how we might be able to use sensory science to improve our nutrition.

Welcome, Annette.

Welcome, thank you, Monica.

It's such a great honor to be here.

Now, in addition to your training as a dietician, your nutrition training,

you're also trained as a food scientist, but can you tell us more about what a food scientist does?

Sure. Well, food science is really a career that a lot of people don't know much about and I didn't know about

this career when I was going to school I started out nutrition and I learned about

food science at Penn State when I took some electives in food science. But food science really

combines engineering and chemistry and the biological sciences as they relate to food. So it really

is a hardcore science major. And many food

scientists work in the food industry and I personally used to work for

cargo flower milling, Pepsico, and McCormick spices, but a lot of food scientists also work for the

government and agriculture and public health initiatives as well. But

technically I'm a sensory scientist, which is a highly specialized type of food scientist,

but many people don't know what this is, so I often refer to myself as a professional taste tester.

And sensory scientists are really the ones who plan and conduct and analyze

taste tests.

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