it's our pleasure i'm very excited for you to be here lisa came in from california and lisa is the vice president at commercial development for eighty horn but she's of the animal wellness division and of course we know that something interesting at least had done it in her history with with was and always with with horn yes twenty six year twenty six years i worked a couple other places as well you were in the food development division of horn one of like what is the food developed in the nation and you think of food as maybe an apple that you pull off a tree or or a hamburger that you take out of a package but there's a science to  food and would you tell us a little bit lisa what that science means and what that is and what it means to us ok foods that you prepared home in some ways you are creating a science experiment when you've been a can you fry and  something on the potter you make candy so what makes it different about doing it in volume and for a number of people for a product that's going to be a finished product is there's a lot that goes into it obviously it has to be safe it has to be put in a package that is appropriate it has to be able to be shipped around the country undergo could be frozen and then thawed and so there's a number of circumstances that eventually when the consumer gets the product it may not look like the original product so product development is where we focused our time and there's a whole science behind how to make a product work at the pilot at the binge of the pilot in production and then ind due to bacteria as you know that's in the news all the time so this is all about providing food safe also it has to still tastes good the texture has to be what you expect and it has to look appealing so there's quite a bit that goes into that so you have a laboratory set up or a kitchen laboratory and our kitchen set up that type of companies have a research facility at their plant and these people all wear their little white coats and they have  a really nice kitchen but it's looks like a lab and they have all the different pieces of equipment to evaluate the process along the way and they test things and they might test of the sky they might test how much something compress breaks too easily there's all these different tests you can do depending on what's a big or if it's a protein bar or it's a beverage and then you have to do a pilot scale up which which means now you've made it on the bench what happens when you make it in the plant well if you've ever made a double batch of cookies you probably be experiences the recipe changes when you scale to a larger volume so there's definitely happens in a plant because it changes cooking time or there is yeah so so you have to make it and the pilot back and then to actually have it transferred to work in the full production scale everything else or run smoothly smoothly you don't want the line to go down and you don't want to have things back you know there's all you've got to keep to be efficient you have to keep production going until it gets all the way packaged sitting on a pallet and it's ready to put into storage before shipping you brought up something that triggered a part of my head and a memory i couldn't cook for anything and when you hear that old adage you can boil water was pretty close to that and i hated to cook and i have actually over the years become a the cook and it happened when i realized of course having a medical degree your spent so much time the laboratory winner and mystery and biology and so forth and when i realized the cooking is nothing more than chemistry it changed my whole attitude toward it and i actually started having fun we're going to hike and do things to make it taste different or whatever and baking i can do i probably would never ever attempt to do but but cooking is actually becoming fun when you look at it as chemistry and it is you put too much of one ingredient and change the whole product that you're making and that's really what the chemistry is right and the browning reaction which we all love which includes baking and ice brown texture that  get and barbecuing is a browning reaction all these things are experiences we expect and to have it happen correctly in a facility and get to you want when you get that product you want to be like you expect the convenience of it it's the consistency and the consistency every time you buy that product should be pretty much the same every time you go to the grocery store you go to a fast food restaurant or a regular restaurant good science is behind all of that and when there's a problem is when you hear about it on the news and there's been a breakdown in somewhere in the process or you get a product and you say what happened to it and you should call  ball nutritional exercise bar let's call i have an idea in my head but but i really don't know how to put ingredients together properly so i would come to you and your facility and then you would map out a plan of how we do that well i would say in particular our company even though we're an ingredient supplier most of the people on our staff are food scientists so they do understand formulation and we could guide to where you could get that many and we are recommending greedy and they would have a probability of success there's many challenges with certain in particular protein bars that's what i was looking for a protein as you're putting a high level of protein and when you do that the bars get very hard over time and you go to the store and i always check that the bar is just so hard i'm not eating that because this is also won't taste as good it's be requiring in my protein bar represent as a company we tend to represent the number one or number two in their field and a particular ingredient category and these are people that have done their due diligence they've got the science behind their product they have all the safety the hassock we know that they're reliable supplier as an ingredient and then we take their product and their innovation and we help get it into the marketplace so let's just say we can solve a new problem with keeping the bar moist we say we have this new ingredient let's just say it's a start that helps it stay saw so we would go to a client and say this is we can help you with this problem you're having and you'll get you know another your shelf life at your bar and it will stay soft those are the kind of problem solving we do so new ingredients can help solve existing problems for texture and that's strictly talking about getting the product to stay in the form you want it or not as much talking about the nutrition cycle that's a whole nother consideration is what do you want to do traditionally in your product and you with that as well the company right because  together and we call this a functional food and we talked about that earlier as a people now rely on like protein bars nutrition bars for a source of energy and nutrition it by the way i'm going to get some extra antioxidants or some extra benefit from the product and so i'm not eating candy bar that's a better choice over can you bar you're going to have regular food or next meal but this is something that more and more people do to eat small meals and have a quick little blighter booster so that's why it's a huge category in the store and so we help all these people with new new ideas people get tired of a flavor or a texture and so they want to change it was something new and so we're always thinking what is coming next what's the time span to make that change or make actually formulate a whole new product like that well look and take a year or two years depends on the company but besides getting the formula right then you have to do all the shelf stability testing and you have to prove out that the product will actually work over time through the distribution channel is sitting on the shelf when you pick it up and then you're going to take it home and let's say you have it in your backpack for three days and then you finally eat it i the texture won't be as good so they'll make certain batches one way and then make an adjustment and come to a product there and they keep doing it and they pick the right one so there's a pretty much how do you know there's a lot of trial the trials are d e on the bench say on the bench in the lab and then they're also done in the pilot test and they will they have a lot of confidence they go to production and then they go to production then there's a lot of q seeing and testing and they might do then introduce their product and in that geographical area and kind of get the response and people like it or don't like it they do consumer testing as well to say do you like how it looks  in this background because they want to take away anything that might influence you because you're looking for a very specific because it is very they have you for like three seconds with the mouse there's people that are trained just in sensory testing so  panels how do you know if it tastes good well that's definitely up to the person in the product because i can like something but what's the palette of your consumer well when you're developing this product and you're about to bring it to market take it off the bench and it's in production who is decided that it has a good taste of the flavor hopefully your consumer studies have demonstrated that you also do take the product out into the marketplace you may have giveaways go to a trade show and have people sample the product there's a number of ways to kind of demonstrate the way to deliver nutrition in something like take the guilt out of the chocolate tell them you don't have to feel guilty and you know that the calories don't count on in terms of the raw material and how that works well for the structure of the products so much of it depends on the physical nature of the building blocks of the product actually sit there and stay stable so those choir proteins requires carbohydrates and fat most foods have some combination of that and so you want to find the right set of those ingredients in order to provide the correct structure so the case of the baked good you know it's across songs you need a lot of fat in the product in order to make it flaky and very nice and stay that way if you're going to make baked goods some of them have more water and flour and some have more fat added to them but the problem with your standard raw materials in your kitchen is they don't really work in production they don't they break down they don't you know they won't hold integrity earl so that's why there's a lot of size behind ingredients because you're trying to take they start and find out the best way to get that product to gel at the right time to set at the right time to bake out at the right time so i sold just starches for six years my background is starch chemistry a lot of science behind it i would never know yes and there's there's all different sources of starch potato from flora from from rise from tapioca and they all act different their little granule before it swells they look different under the microscope they swell differently they break differently and so of th brakes now perfect example when you make putting with the corn starch and you go to put it in your refrigerator and the next day you go with separate low water on the top will the natural hydrogen bonds make all want to come back together and they just squeeze the water out and so now you have the break breakage of the starch gel and that's just what it does so you don't want that to happen in production because then you'd have a failed products so and then he effects every one of those different yes and it's very important so was ph because ph can drastically change how the proteins interact and also what happens with the starches acid environment it's safe for food production so if you're you want to worry about bad things growing foods that are under four point five ph you don't have to worry about the bad bacteria you lower the moisture content in the formula there's less water available to the microorganisms to grow rice was called water activity you can add more salt which was typically what was done for many years before food science really developed as people how did they preserve their food salt they added a lot of sugar and a lot of salt which the microbes say that it's not a good environment for them that the water's not is available for them to grow and then the other way was to dry up product and smoke a product and that's why you have products that you keep for so long enchanting was really our first attempt to really get shelves debility you know when you have all this produce and coming in and then you don't want to throw it out how do you save some of it and so canning became popular and then the venture in a frozen foods was significant because it allowed us to take vegetables at their peak freeze them and now they have freezing and drawing at the same time which is a whole nother yeah which is makes it much better they say rehydrate better they bake better they cook better so all these things allow the foods in order to get them at their peak time keep them safe and then still have the texture and the mouthfeel and the flavor that you want so that the freeze dried has a very extensive shelf life yes because you've taken the moisture way down and you dried it at the right time  the vegetable and so or more fruit so it's a significant improvement and you probably noticed that the frozen food section has greatly expanded because there's so much more we can do to get a quality product that still looks good in appetizer right and still handles all the mishandling even you taking it home and letting it thaw out in your car before you get it in your house and so there's a lot of abuse and you have to plan that into your  in those days and then other things in the space program has created a lot of new opportunities to have how do we have something that you can take just add water to it and have it turn out and then backpacking yeah how did your knowledge and your training in this commercial food let's call it that for like a better term change what you do at home i think that's a very good question because i really learned that i want to prepare more fresh as much as possible i mean i stink that convenience is great but i don't want to just rely on convenience and i do want to i want to enjoy the perforation process and then sometimes i like it's nice having in a step that shortened by a convenience item that i can add to so i think that that that's you know we're all busy we  all want to eat every fresh as much as possible how do we get it all to happen and today there's a lot more choices for consumers to be make the food have a partial involvement in the step and then if you just don't have time you know you pop something in the oven and it's just already prepared for you so you pick packages up and go like oh i don't know i don't think i want to but i mostly look at the calorie count content because there's a lot of hidden in foods there's quite a bit of fat salt and sugar which makes it taste good but you have to really i like to look at the calorie content and say ok this is have to have protein in it does it have a good tend to go for granted and extra virgin and so forth but all of the oil yeah i like i like a lot of oil a lot as well and good quality organic butter as a vegetarian you probably wouldn't use butter but it is really beneficial for y you have to wonder why they don't have some of the same health problems we do and it's a great it's good to have the extra virgin first pression you're getting all the nutrients and all the benefits and it's not being watered down or we're coming to the close of our show and i want to thank you so much for coming on to healthy pass healthy owners the knowledge that you have such great insight and things that we don't think about because we're used to just walking in the store seeing how pretty the package yes grabbing it and taking it take it home and it's interesting to hear what's really behind the scenes of what we're eating and i think a lot of it is an eye opener because you don't think about it