Food science is a field embodying the application of modern science and engineering to the production, processing, diversification, preservation and utilization of food.
Food is very essential to man’s survival and great attention should be paid to food production, distribution, wholesomeness and preservation.
To ensure that food is clean and safe for human consumption and having keeping quality, food scientists are responsible in seeing that the crop harvested, the fish caught, that animal slaughtered, the egg laid and the milk produced reach the consumer in the most acceptable, nutritious safe and wholesome condition by carefully studying the chemical complexities of food, their vulnerability to spoilage, their disease vectors and varying sources of production.
Food scientists try to eliminate seasonal gluts and shortage by providing a technologically sound base for the levelling out of food surpluses and shortages with and among countries and regions.
They also see to the remedy for the malady of post-harvest losses in food grains in the highly industrialised societies has been the development, along with increase in yield potential of adequate storage and low- cost processing technologies to preserve and store the harvest.
The development and production and new nutritious foods to improve the diet of people suffering from malnutrition, the provision of adequate group – specific diets for the young and adults performing under conditions of stress, pregnant and lactating mothers, kwashiorkor and diabetics patients.
Scope of food science
The scope of food science is in threefold:
1. To make it possible to assemble the great quantities of food required by a crowded population.
2. To make the food agreeable to the consumers that is to say, to provide them so far as is possible with the kind and quality of food they demand at all times of the year doing this partly by carefully controlling the quantity and uni-forrming of the commodities