[Music] My guest today is Jonathan Griebel. He’s a principal scientist at Cargill, the largest privately held company in the US and the largest privately held food company in the world. Cargill has been in operation for 160 years. So, it’s a pretty incredible success story. So, Jonathan, why don’t you take a minute and kind of talk about your background, how you got started with Cargill, and then maybe give a little bit of information about Cargill as a company as well. So, as you mentioned, my name is Jonathan Griel. I’m a principal food scientist at Cargill. I’ve been with Cargill on September 11th. It’ll be 8 years. So, I work mainly in our what I call our prepared meals group. So, that we do prepared meals for large companies such as Costco, uh Sam’s Club, uh Kroger, and that. So, prepared meals would be things like, uh we have a Thai red tie chicken curry, uh beef stroganov, beef burgundy, things like that. So, prepared meals. I work in the pipeline development area, so I’m working on ideas that are uh three to or one to three years out. So it takes us obviously a while to kind of work on or get these ideas. So we have a group of very talented chefs that we work with that are internal. So they develop a gold standard for us that that’s how we get started. And then I’m a I previously worked as a chef. So that’s how I kind of got involved with the research chefs association. So I started out my career as a chef. Actually I worked for 15 years as a working chef. Started out my career working in large hotels. Uh my passion was uh gourmet French cooking and uh buttercream and egg yolks and all that. And then I realized that if I kept eating like that, I was going to be dead by the age of 40. So I uh I read Jane Brody’s nutrition handbook and I said, “Huh, maybe I should eat a little bit more healthy and all that.” So the last half of my career, I worked at a health club. Kind of got more interested in kind of more of a balanced approach. So a little bit of balance. So um I believe my philosophy in life there’s no such thing as bad food just bad quantities. So you can still eat you can still eat butter egg yolks and cream just do it in moderation. So again no such thing as bad food just bad quantities and all that. So yeah no I I like that way of framing it. I talk about that a lot with my students as well that you know and also there are health implications of being orthorexic right? So if you stress too much about it, it’s going to be a lot worse for you than just being moderate in how you approach things. My point exactly. I brought that up. I said the stress about worrying about whether you know the uh the bad food of the week is going to kill you is is far worse than than eating, you know, if you really have to have French fries fried in beef tallow, you know, enjoy them and then just do it in moderation, things like that. So, while I was doing that, I had actually went back and and got my degree in food science and I had seen an ad for uh uh it was Pillsbury at the time. So, Pillsbury Food Service. So, I got a job working at Pillsbury at the time and worked for Pillsbury. I worked started out in their food service division and then I transferred to the international division and uh I actually grew up overseas so I was kind of returning to my passion of traveling internationally. So, I got to travel the world on Pillsbury’s Pillsbury’s dime and all that. So, so worked for Pillsbury then. Pillsbury was acquired by General Mills in 2001. So, worked for Pillsbury General Mills for uh 21 years and uh worked in their meals division kind of again working on pipeline development, working on new products. So, got to work in a lot of interesting and fun brands such as uh Old El Paso, Hagenas. I worked in I worked in the Hagenas cafes area. I didn’t work on the ice cream actually. I worked in Hagadas Cafes. So I actually got to work with Pierre Romeary who was a very famous, you may have heard of him. He’s uh he’s Mr. Macaron, very famous French pastry chef. So we developed a line of pastries for um for the Hagadas cafes. Um Green Giant and then uh actually worked at a brand in China called Wanchai Ferryy, which was a a line of dumplings we did in China. So, I actually um used a little bit of culinary arts and food science to take them from a handmade uh dumpling to a uh commercialized machine-made dumpling that was sold all over China now. So, I think it’s the number one brand in China right now and all that. So, so Madame Chong Madame Chong ch showed me how to make her handmade dumpling. So, it was just actually the special fold that she put on it that was really critical to how she shaped her dumplings and all that. So, so Jonathan, what’s the day-to-day kind of like for you working there as a principal food scientist? So, I have a kind of varied career. So, what I talked about is kind of part of my job. So, I work on prepared meals. So, um I kind of a three three major parts. So, other part is pipeline development. So, so uh for some of our other food groups in the within the protein thing. So, working on innovation. Um, so I’ve been using a lot of uh artificial intelligence now to drive kind of ideation for um for that group and just it’s a lot of fun because uh as I’m getting a little bit older, I kind of don’t remember all the things that I I did back in my in my uh in my culinary day. So it’s nice to kind of use the uh insights that uh we can do and building like using chat GBT to kind of put all the insight information we have and car both cargo and general mills we just had all these reams of data on on the consumer all that load that into chat GBT and then marry that up with um with uh with the culinary things and kind of put those two together and also you know we have these ideation sessions where we generate like 300 ideas and then they always say you know you we’re going to use those someday but we never end up using So, uh, tapping into that data, putting that all into chat GBT and and and, uh, have it turn out and then ask asking it to develop new ideas based on, uh, consumer insights work you’ve done in the past and then what’s kind of new and trendy out in the marketplace and all that. And it’s amazing how quickly I can come up with new ideas. You know, some are good, some are bad. Uh, you still need you still need the human in the room to kind of sort through them and say, “This makes sense for our consumer. This doesn’t make sense and all the consumers.” It’s uh it’s not going to put anybody out of out of a job. It’s just going to make our job a little bit easier and and move a little bit faster. And then the third part of my job is, you know, we hire a lot of uh food scientists and PhDs in food science and all that. A lot of them don’t have the culinary skills that they need. So I’ve been involved in um setting up culinary training for our food scientists. So we’ve partnered So uh so the main headquarters for Cargill is based in Minneapolis, but the uh the headquarters for the protein group is based in Witchah. So I’ve partnered with Witchah Tech and then a local Henipa Technical College here in Minneapolis uh to do culinary classes for our our students so that they can get the certified culinary scientist uh certification through the research chefs association. So been quite successful at that. So um it’s uh it’s amazing you know those of us that are chefs when they come back and and uh and I had actually started this back in um in my General Mills days you know and this guy he he had worked for General Mills for like 21 years and he took the class and he came back one day and he said I learned how to make rue today and and it was like oh really that’s kind of exciting you know I uh I kind of knew it was working when I was uh I was actually just helped help helping serve the food at a at a major presentation that they were giving to the to the CEO of General Mills and the VP gets up and he was talking about this and he says yes and now all our food scientists know about the five mother sauces and all that. I’m going they’re kind of getting to understand that kind, you know, we’re not going to make we’re not going to make gourmet chefs out of our food scientists, but if they can just kind of learn the basics. So, as they talk to our, you know, I mentioned, you know, we work with our flavor or sauce supply companies. They can learn the basics of the mother sauces and kind of talk to the sauce suppliers and say, you know, I need a moure sauce. They know what the basics of the moure sauce is. Um, it’ll just make every everybody uh better what they do and all that. So, yeah. So that’s important and that’s kind of how I got involved with the research chefs association. I think that’s been really important and that’s going to be I guess part of my legacy as I kind of move towards the twilight of my career. So yes. Yeah. So, I’ll put a link to the research chefs association and you mentioned AI and at the last conference I’m sure you probably saw uh the presentation about AI in foods and you know companies and I’d love to talk about that a little bit more because I use AI a lot um chat GBT and and other AI platforms as well and as I’m sure you know it’s very flawed a lot of times in science like really basic stuff it can get very wrong um ideation is a great use for it because you know ideas are just ideas, right? But I’m just kind of curious your experience with it and are you using it to help with recipe development as well or do you pretty much do that using other tools? I use it mostly for idea generation and um it’s also maybe for a little bit of formulation development but you know as a chef you you kind of know the you know you know I don’t really but for food scientists to allow them to kind of go in and say you know you know show me how to make a sauce or something like that it can be very helpful but again you still need that kind of uh uh chef slash uh somebody knows a little bit about food in the room because you can it can it can generate a lot of hallucinations and all that and sometimes the answers are are all wrong. So, you know, kind of to your point, you know, it’s fine if you’re just generating ideas and and you know, the idea can be totally wacky and all that, but you wouldn’t want your your brain surgeon, you know, you going in there and say, how do I do a labbotomy again and all that? So, you and all that. So, for ideation, so and then actually uh uh I have an upcoming ideation session. And so I said,”Well, how would how would you structure this ideation session, you know, based on uh some of the jobs to be done that we have coming up and like that? How would you structure it?” So I kind of put that into I came up with a pretty good pretty good plan uh um for using it. So um and and I think the key obviously as you all know is kind of how to prompt it properly. Um and there’s a lot of you know prompt engineering uh information out there. I have a system that I developed that I think is working pretty well. Uh I not going to share it with you because it’s it’s quite proprietary. It’s kind of proprietary today, but but it’s working pretty well. And I and I actually and u my my oxymoronic tip of the day is you prompt GBT to write the prompt that that you want to do. So it’s like like you probably know that already. And so and so actually I I fed my prompt into Chat GBT and I said, “Is this is this a pretty good prompt?” They said yeah and they asked me to change a few things around. So no that’s a great suggestion and I I have also found that that’s key that you know you get to to understand its limitations and the kinds of mistakes that it tends to make. And the other things I’ve worked on really big complicated projects with it that that are difficult for it to handle. So having it be able to output a kind of a a checklist that here’s what I need to kind of continue to to do this is really helpful so you can kind of feed that back in every time you need to. And you mentioned um gold standard recipes and probably not everyone watching this may know what they are but basically you know a chef will create a recipe like they would in a restaurant essentially and then colonologists will take that and translate it to what’s needed for production. So like making sure the pH is 4.6 or lower or you know things like that. um hctants and stabilizers and so forth for kind of long term, you know, it’s not going to be served immediately, so we need this to be to be shelf stable or we need it to not separate or things like that. So, is that something that you again do just with your colonology background? Do you involve AI and helping do those kinds of formulations when you’re translating those recipes? Yeah, that’s actually how we start out. So again, we have a I think we have 10 chefs across the Cargill, eight to 10 chefs. So one’s specifically dedicated to our team and all that. So start with a gold standard recipe and it’ll come to me, you know, with tablespoons and cups and all and all that and and uh you know, more more household ingredients and all that. And um then my job is to kind of translate it, you know, I translate his recipe into a formula that would kind of work from a processing standpoint. Um it would be again like you said more stable depending on the kind of processing it has to go through whether it’s you know has to be thermal stable freeze thaw stable things like that and that’s something where my uh you know knowledge of um it’s also beautiful that you know cargill is a major supplier you know starchers and thickers and things like that so I can rely on those people also that’s the beauty of working for a large company you can call up our our starch technical expert and say hey I need something that’ll stand up to you know low pH u you know high shear uh for that and you can just you you have the uh uh access to those resources which anybody else has too. You can just call up Cargill and we’ll assist you as well but uh but I have you know almost instant access to those kind of people. So so yeah that’s my role as a colonologist where I can have both the culinary and the food science uh background to kind of be able to translate those recipes from a from a recipe what I call a recipe into a formula. Right. If you can shoot me an email with a list of names and phone numbers, then that’d be awesome. And bank account numbers and pin numbers. Yeah. No, just just, you know, so I can, hey, I’m working with starches today. And yeah. No, it must be awesome to be in a company that that has that kind of knowledge and resources that available to you. No, but on the starches and texturizers standpoint, we do have technical experts that can help you with any kind of issue whatsoever that you have. So uh and we have a wide range of u solutions and also like on cocoa chocolate that kind of things. You’re you’re in your own you have your own chocolate business right? Isn’t that one of I do. Yeah. So but you know if you want a little bit more insight. All right. Uh a rising tide floats all boats. Right. So yeah that is true. No, that’s one really great thing and that’s one reason that I love the research association is people are just so open and helpful to each other and it really is I mean it’s a great community. I don’t mean to do a plug here for the RCA but it really is a fantastic organization and I’ve just had such a great experience with with people and sharing information. Yeah. Yeah. I like the people like somebody that says well I’m not going to share my recipe with you. It’s like, dude, you know, some somewhere along early in your career, somebody showed you how to do something and it’s like, you know, it’s ridiculous that you won’t, you know, pass on that information. And every recipe is built on the shoulders of other y people, you know, it’s it’s not like you’ve invented something completely new. Yeah. As Charles Darwin said, if I was seen further than others, it’s only by standing on the shoulders of giants. So, Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So for someone who wants to get into the kind of work that you do in colonology and food science, I’m kind of curious, you know, what your experience has been in terms of you talked a little bit about the education you went through, but is is the job what you expected it to be? Are there frustrations that you’ve had along the way that you’ve kind of had to learn? you know, maybe you came in a little idealistic about changing certain things and you realize it’s really hard to do that uh with industry and so you kind of do what you can. Yeah. Transitioning from being a chef, you know, when I kind of called the shots and could make anything I wanted to and people just like, “Wow, that’s really cool.” And you know, you were, I guess, a big fish in a small pond and then transitioning into Pillsbury where I was a small fish in a big pond. It was like, “Oh, you mean I have to like do some testing?” And it was it it was a little bit of a little bit of a culture shock and all that. So, um, yeah. So I mean you know both General Mills and and uh and uh Cargill are really you know we call it insight driven companies you know and and and hopefully my bosses don’t see this interview and all that but or the consumer insight people but you know it’s like you know they say you have to develop products that you know the consumers really want and and it’s like well what do consumers really want you know and we we we pretend we we pretend we we pretend we can figure that out and and uh I forget what’s the name of that author that won the Nobel Prize that proved that you know consumers are irrational you know they make irrational choices and and he also proved that that um that uh they don’t really tell you what what what they say and what they do are two different things it’s like right and yet we keep asking them uh like you know how do you feel about this what you a great example this was I was in a focus group behind behind the glass one I’m listening to these people and and this lady says, “Yeah, I really watch my sodium closely.” I I eat no more than five milligrams a day. And and and all the marketing and see how people writing that down. It’s like I you know, do you guys know how much 5 milligrams a day is, you know? It’s like, yeah. And and and same time this, you know, I’m cutting back on sugar, so I only put marshmallow fluff into my my desserts. And it’s like, do you read that label? So don’t have to. So I think I think we need more of a balance of and this is coming from a chef talking more of a balance of insight and intuition driven consumer research where you kind of like I think they’re going to like this and and and you know we we spend a lot of upfront work on all this concept testing and jobs to be done and all that and it can be six months before we get anything in consumer’s mouths and say, “How do you feel about the what do you think about the taste of the and it’s like and I always liken that to like if you went to a art museum and said, you know, what do you think of this picture?” I mean, get this lined up with, you know, what do you think of this picture? Well, I can’t really see it. It’s like, yeah, we’re asking consumers to make decisions on, you know, on a food that’s very tangible and, you know, visceral and all that based on something written on a piece of paper and in words that people just kind of word smith together and may or might may not be correct and and um so yeah, so I have a little bit of struggle with that, but that’s that’s a chef and me coming out. That’s always difficult. when I years ago when I was more in technology, I worked at Apple and one of the things I did, you know, I did manage project product development and I ran focus groups and one thing we learned very quickly is that people don’t really know what they want and so you you have to really be careful how you frame the questions to them and asking you know it’s like um and your your thing about sodium is is perfect as well. Um, people are just really unaware of what they’re really eating or what they’re doing. I used to teach people how to drive on, you know, racetracks and stuff and people are like, “Oh yeah, around this turn I didn’t lift at all.” And then you look at the the data what they were actually doing is that they like no clue what they actually did. And you know, that’s with with research and and diet that’s really difficult as well because people don’t remember what they eat. And even if they do remember, they’re not really aware of what’s in the food. And so, yeah, so it’s really difficult to do that kind of thing. You really need to present them with things and, you know, do triangle tests and so forth and really see what they like and how they respond to things. Yeah. Yeah. I think that concept of the minimal viable product is just so valuable. I mean, we spend a little bit so much time kind of trying to refine the the concept and the language and the positioning and all that and then you get to the end and you then you make the product and then consumers are going, “What in the hell? I wouldn’t eat this.” You know, put put a product together, put it in front of consumers, then have them come back to you and say, “Oh, this isn’t kind of what I expected. It should be it should be blue, not yellow. It should be square, not round, and all that.” and and have them and then then you can kind of develop it much and and then your it your rate of iteration can be so rapid because you can just kind of change it as you kind of go along especially especially if you have a chef in the room who knows how to cook and manipulate and all that. So yeah, a lot of times it’s just about setting expectations with people as well. Um H Blumenthal um was developing a new ice cream and it was a savory ice cream and it was like a salmon ice cream if I remember correctly and he had all these people trying it and they tried it and it was just like terrible and it was like why would you serve this and then he changed the name to something like 463 or just something completely you know random and people loved it because they didn’t have any preset expectations of what it was going to be and so they weren expecting to be something that turned out very different and they were really open to what it was, right? Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah, I it’s it’s a really fascinating world and being able to kind of be in the thick of it must be pretty interesting where you get to I’m sure that there are constraints, you know, where of of what you can do and what projects are approved. Yeah. But, um, you know, just being able to to get in there and do, you know, especially with your chef background and being able to to create these golden stand recipes and then convert them through to things that that where you can have the same quality but better shelf life and everything else. um and be able to actually deliver them to consumers. Yeah. And you know, it’s it’s it’s always a balancing act. You know, we we developed the gold standard recipes, you know, and they’re always they’re always going to have butter in them and and the finest ingredients and all that. And in the end, you know, and you know that if you know your final customer, you know, they’re not going to be able to afford butter and all that. But if you start with the gold standard and if you start with an A, you know, you’re probably after you get done formulating and cost saving and all that, you’re probably gonna up with the C. But if you start with a C, you’re never going to get to a really good quality quality tasting product and all that. So, uh, you might as well start with an A and work your way down. It’s like it’s like kind of like negotiating on a on a on a on a loan or something like that. If you if you start too low, Yeah. you’re never going to get to the where you want to be. Yeah, that’s true. So, do you like say, “Okay, so this is made with better, so we’re going to put detal in and try to get you as close to that perception of better.” And you know your brain will fill in a lot of stuff that’s not there in a lot of cases, right? So is that kind of the way that you approach it? Yeah, it kind of depends on obviously the customer. So you know if we’re formulating for you know every a lot of companies have their no no lists that we have to kind of work around like that. So so it depends on that. So and and every obviously every customer has their price point. So, so some for some customers we can deliver the a without any issues and all that but some customers we have to then I’m not going to I’m not going to mention them on uh but some some we do have to you know uh we are pretty much moving away from any kind of artificial flavors um and obviously artificial colors are pretty much out now so as well so and that’s really interesting the changes industry has made in some of those areas that I It took a really long time, but they’re finally um you know, and in some cases it’s great. In some cases, it’s really just consumer perception. Mhm. You know, I was going to ask you also, I did an interview a while back with Chef Tanner who’s the executive director of the ACF. One of the things that we talked about, he also, you know, worked professionally in food like you do. um is I think I work he wrote for Campbell for example and using MSG in foods you know there’s such especially I think younger people less so but people are still very kind of locked into negative feelings about MSG because they don’t really understand what it is um and he’s basically said there’s no way that you can change these perceptions and it’s Not even worth trying, right? No. So, nope. You’ll you’ll drive yourself crazy. So, yeah. And like I said from the same presentation yesterday, all food is made up of chemicals. Like like get over it, though. So, it’s like and it kind of comes back to education, you know, like what what uh what website are you getting your information from? or you getting it from uh Joemo’s blogosphere who like like don’t eat any seed oils, it’s really bad or high fructose corn syrup or uh whatever. So pick your pick your poison and all. So yeah, and you know and speaking of poisons, you know, the the dose makes the poison, right? So you know, some cases a little bit of poison might actually be good for you, right? And it goes kind of back to what you’re saying about moderation in foods and there’s a lot of stuff you know like you talk about chemicals and right everything is chemicals right that’s that’s what makes up the world so it’s people if there’s something like you know dodium guanolate that they don’t recognize then this is a bad thing and I don’t want it in my food but if they really understand what it is and it’s just you know a key molecule in biology that’s like in all life um and we just happen to be, you know, extracting it from something uh or using fermentation to make more of it or whatever and using in foods, then, you know, I’m I’m giving a talk uh at the ACF conference in a couple weeks about proteins and all this stuff and um there’s just a lot of misconception about a lot of these things and there are things that, you know, this is something I wanted to talk to you about as well that food companies will take certain knowledge knowled about how our biology works and how our appetite system works. And they’ll use that to make foods that are more addictive or that, you know, cause you to overeat certain, you know, too much carbohydrates or fats or whatever. And part of that just has to do with what you were talking about with the cost of of good proteins, the cost of good, you know, butter and things like that. Um, so I’m curious what it’s like for you, especially with your background, um, when you are formulating foods that, you know, maybe aren’t as good for people as you’d like them to be, but you know, industry needs to be profitable, right? And it’s all about selling, but you also want to try to to do good in the world and to make the foods as healthful as possible. Well, I mean, most of the stuff that tastes really, really good is kind of cheap, you know, salt, sugar, fat. Yeah. And and you know, I’m I’m kind of a uh a minimalist, you know, so and it kind of gets back to flavor, you know, I like I like to try to get the most amount of flavor with the fewest amount of ingredients. And I use a classic example of pizza crust. You know, you know, four ingredients, water, sugar, water, water, flour, salt, and yeast. You know, just to get, you know, nice three-day fermentation. You can get really, really good tasting. Or you can take flour and add some fermentation flavors and blah blah blah and all that and kind of get pretty close. But, and there’s probably a word for this, but you know, you you taste something that has flavor added and after you eat it, you know, the the the flavor just kind of dissipates and you don’t kind of get that that lingering thing. But if you taste something really good, like a really good well fermented pizza crust, it’s on a really good pizza, like 3 hours later, you still got that flavor in your mouth. You kind of crave it and all that. So, it’s like, wow, that was really good quality things. So, so I think that’s what’s missing from a lot of, you know, industrial industrially developed products is kind of that good because we’re always trying to push things through a little bit faster. You know, nobody’s going to want to ferment pizza crust for, you know, three days in their in their cooler and all that. So, yeah, that’s a great example. And I mean there’s a whole area of science where you know like with artificial sweeteners, sugar has a particular sweetness profile, right? How how sweet it gets, how quickly, how it ramps off. And all these other artificial sweeteners that we have have different profiles. So although they taste sweet on our tongue, they taste off somehow. Like our brains like wait a minute, something’s not quite right about this. And the, you know, pizza dough is a great example. And you know if it’s fermented really it’s only three ingredients right because the yeast is built into the flour. Yeah. So um super super simple but there are hundreds and hundreds of volatile molecules created as part of that process. It’s really complicated and to do that commercially you just can’t. There’s no way you could possibly create all those flavors and you know all those aromomas and so forth. So, um, you know, kind of if you can find a way to to get back to something more natural and something that your brain is like, “Yeah, that that’s right.” That’s right. Yeah. That’s why I think a lot of you know the fermentation flavors are so popular right now you know like kimchi and I think some other things you know that are really popular because get those fermentations which developed all those you know really nice tasty chemicals and again chemicals you know and I’m sure if you put them through a mass spec and you know identified exactly what they were it would scare people off but uh it’s like that’s where all the flavor is. Yeah. And it’s it’s all natural. And it doesn’t just because something’s natural doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for you, right? And just because something’s created in a lab doesn’t mean it’s bad for you, right? Yeah. Exactly. Are there any particular um products that you’ve been really proud of? Probably my biggest claim to fame. Uh back in my General Mills/ Pillsbury days, I developed a called the Old El Paso tortilla boat. It’s a It was a tortilla that was instead of flat, it was shaped like a boat. So instead of falling all apart when you made a burrito, it kind of held together and all that. So So it took me about 3 to four years to develop that. And it was kind of complicated because it was we had it was both uh the the physical uh physics probably, you know, to get the expansion just right of the the male and the female molds and all that and also the the chemical leavenvenings was a kind of a challenge. So using experimental design to get the chemical levelings designed just right. And uh luckily this was back in my General Mills days and they had a nice really nice machine shop and he was really much smarter than I was around around building the molds and all that. But you know it took me uh good three years to get that development on that. But uh once we got it developed and launched it was sold all over the world and it was and the um the uh former CEO of uh General Mills named it’s one of the top inventions of all of General Mills I took along with Honey Nut Cheerios and the and the Midlings purifier. It’s like wow I’ve got a nice praise from the guy like that. So, and then um the other one I developed was a it was just a plain simple brownie recipe that I developed and it started out as a we called them a tube set brownie. So, it was a brownie that just came in a tube so that the the restaurant um uh operator all you do is just squeeze out of this tube into a into a into a pan and and that was cool. But then uh they took that same recipe and it just kept getting resurrected and resurrected and and um made it for the military and big uh sheet pans and then McDonald’s launched it as one of their brownie cube projects and then now it’s being sold as little brownie bites and that. So that thing just kept getting the same formula kept getting resurrected and I can always kind of tell because I looked at the ingredient deck on the back and I remember just kind of ah that’s my formula. So just did that thing. So that had uh like five lives that kind of kept coming back and coming back and all that. So and then one thing I I developed that I was like not really proud of but like I can’t believe they’re eating this. Uh I developed a shelf stable guacamole and this is over was actually over in Europe. And I don’t know if you know this but if you heat guacam avocados up they just developed this incredibly rancid uh uh flavor and all that. And uh right so I actually develop I developed a process around that. How do I heat them up without getting that rancid flavor? I actually got a patent on that process and um but it still had kind of a strange flavor to it and all that. You’re trying to deactivate the polyphenol oxidase. Yeah. Is that your Yeah. Um France just loved the flavor and I was like you got to be kidding me. So because it still had a little bit of that in there. I guess that goes back to expectations and if you’re expecting it to taste like fresh avocado, you’re not gonna that’s not going to be it. But if you’re open to this is a new product, you know, if it doesn’t taste bad or even I mean there’s a lot of as you know there’s a lot of flavors that um taste terrible but in small doses they’re really important to the flavors that we expect in foods, right? So, you know, isoblaric acid or buggeric acid or, you know, there’s compounds in meats that are really foul smelling in large amounts, but if they’re missing, then the meat just doesn’t taste right. Yeah. So, I could see you formulating something that’s if your expectation isn’t there, it it could be interesting. And, you know, especially, you know, with fermented foods, there are so many flavors. You know, look at natto, for example, which and I like natto. When we went to Japan um recently, I generated as much as I could because it’s hard to find good natto in the US. Um but for a lot of people, it’s just it’s like, you know, keep it away. And part of that’s textural as well. But um it is interesting. I don’t know why France would be Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there’s something in their gene pool that makes them less Yeah. Awesome. That was awesome if you can be in a job where you, you know, do this stuff and then you guys actually see it out in the real world. It’s like, hey, I made that. You know, that’s that must be pretty nice. So, for someone who’s interested in getting into the field of colonology or, you know, food science, do you have any advice for them? You know, both in terms of what education they should have to be really successful and also what their expectation should be. I would really say get a job in a restaurant. I think that really helped me and one of the key things to learn is the concept of mis palas. You know, learning how to work and kind of be organized about your work. You know, some of the the scientists that I work with now when they um when they uh set up their workstations or something like that, they got stuff laying all over the place and they haven’t kind of got that organized thing like the like when you’re when you’re working on a line and have to, you know, crank things out, you better be prepared. you’re not going to last very long. So, kind of getting that whole concept of misin plows into the your your your kind of working schedule is really important like that. And um so kind of I mean like I say, you know, find something you do you enjoy. You never work a day in your life. I mean that’s kind of the key thing. So I I just enjoy, you know, being around food and all that. I I have a passion about it. you know, some of my earlier earliest memories around food and and uh I think I mentioned I grew up overseas and uh and uh I remember dipping deep fried yams into red hot pepper and that that flavor just kind of sear seared to my mind, you know, and that’s how I kind of got my interest in food and all that. So, so yeah. So, find something said like you’re passionate to do and and uh and you’ll find out in a hurry if you don’t like like being around food because if you’re if you’re working a rush on a on a on a busy lunch hour uh you don’t like that uh get out of the food business because uh you aren’t going to be very happy. So, and then uh you know my career path I was I was lucky that I got to you know go to finish my uh food science degree while I was you know still being a chef. So it kind of worked out well for me. So that kind of and you know always be learning finding out from other people and I think I think especially now I mean travel is really the key uh you know learning about new experiences and all that and uh learning about new cultures and that it’s just really a lot of fun and exciting and all that. So what level of degree in food science is really expected? Generally a master’s is, you know, some places will still hire with bachelors, but it’s generally a masters is preferred. Um, kind kind of depends on what area you want to work. You know, if you want to do just pure research, um, uh, you know, you’d probably be looking at a PhD, but if you just want to do like new product development, a masters is almost kind of a I know at General Mills, they wouldn’t hire you without a masters for food science. All right. So, you start off working in a kitchen and then you get a master’s degree and then anything else that you think would really help prepare someone? Um, I actually went back and got my MBA too cuz uh you know it’s a it’s a business, you know, and if you don’t understand the business side of it, you know, you can you can make all the great product you want, but if uh you uh if you don’t make uh product that’s uh financially viable, you’re not going to go very far. So again, understanding that it’s it’s really helpful as well. So it’s nice to pick up a lot understanding the business side of it. And also just kind of from working in a large corporation, it kind of helps to have those the background. So So yeah, I got more letters behind my name that I really need. But so right, letters are fun, you know. I mean, even I found even if you’re working in kind of vaguely related fields, it’s all really helpful, you know, and and the life experience you have, I think, is is absolutely invaluable. And being able to come into this with with a really strong background as a chef and, you know, working for different companies like that is just experience you can never get in in school. Yeah. Yeah. I I say I learned more in my first six months as working chef than the two years in culinary school. So my first job as a chef was at the Hyatt Regency in Houston, Texas. You know, was thousand room hotel. We had uh banquetss for up to 2,000 and um and then five different restaurants. And boy, you learned a lot, you know, chef chefs from all over the world uh coming there and and uh yeah, so when when it was time to crank out the banquetss, everybody off the line and helping helping dish up the banquet and it was just like crank it out. So, it was a lot of fun. We just did a little, not quite at that level, but um a group of chefs just got together and we made I don’t know eight or 10,000 sandwiches for a Special Olympics. And it was just really a super organized assembly line. And it’s great to work in environment like that with people who are professionals and are just like really organized and everything just, you know. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, we did a steak and lobster one time for like 2,000 people and it was just like wow. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of a lot. Yeah, you better be organized or uh you’ll be you’ll be fired. Yeah. All right, so any last advice you have for for people who are either already in colonology or interested in getting in into it? Uh stay curious. So yeah, check out the MA restaurants. Uh we have a Don’t feel afraid to share. Yeah. So I’ve been very fortunate in my career. Yeah, that’s that really is what drives our industry forward is people working collaboratively and sharing and you know there are going to be industry secrets obviously and you know the the chocolate world and the chocolate industry is so super secretive and uh I mean it’s kind of crazy some of the stories you know like with Mars and Hershey’s and so forth but um but yeah but in the world that that you work in I I think things are a lot better. One of the great things about Cargo, we’re a part of this group called the Partners in Food Solutions and it helps uh helps startups in Africa uh and uh so they ask you if you want to help and you can kind of pick the projects you work on. So, and you help little startups uh in Africa. you know, I’ve worked on a a pouch bean project and I’m working on a a rice rice porridge project and um it’s just kind of cool to be able to to help, you know, small little entrepreneurial companies out there uh get started. So, it’s a way to it’s a way to give back. So, there’s lots of ways lots of opportunities to kind of give back to the give back to the world. So, and the world needs it a lot right now. Yes, it does. And that’s super important. I’ll leave it at that.

Yeah. Never know who’s watching, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I agree. Giving back is is super important and like you said, the world really needs it. You know, the the our country needs it and the whole world needs it. And so it’s great that organizations like Cargill and and lots of companies, you know, I found really in the chef world, there’s there’s so much charity and so much working together and, you know, so many people really go out of their ways, whether it’s just a very local community thing that they’re helping out or or more global thing. Um, it’s it’s wonderful. I mean, it really Yeah. To who much is given, much is expected. So yeah. Well, Jonathan, we’ve all thank you so so much for taking the time out of your day to to chat a little bit about this. Um I mean this fascinating field and you know a lot of people are really interested in in getting into food in that more kind of science side of it. So it’s great to get to talk to someone who has such a long experience both as a chef and also as a research scientist and scientist. I really really appreciate it. Thanks. It’s a great life. [Music]