science

Institute of Food Technologists

Institute of Food Technologists is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Institute of Food Technologists rather than just read about it. In short: The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is an international, non-profit scientific society of professionals engaged in food science, food technology, and related areas in academia, government and industry. It has more than 17,000 members from more than 95 countries.

Key takeaways

Institute of Food Technologists belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Institute of Food Technologists to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Institute of Food Technologists from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is an international, non-profit scientific society of professionals engaged in food science, food technology, and related areas in academia, government and industry. It has more than 17,000 members from more than 95 countries.

History

Early history As food technology grew from the individual family farm to the factory level, including the slaughterhouse for meat and poultry processing, the cannery for canned foods, and bakeries for bread, the need to have personnel trained for the food industry did also. Literature such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in 1906 about slaughterhouse operations would be a factor in the establishment of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later that year. The United States Department of Agriculture was also interested in food technology, and research was already being done at agricultural colleges in the United States, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of California, Berkeley. By 1935, two MIT professors, Samuel C. Prescott and Bernard E. Proctor decided that it was time to hold an international conference regarding this. A detailed proposal was presented to MIT President Karl Taylor Compton in 1936 was presented with $1500 of financial aid from MIT for a meeting to be held from June 30 to July 2, 1937, with Compton asking how many people would be in attendance at this meeting. Prescott replied with "fifty or sixty people". 500 people actually attended the event. This meeting proved so successful that in early 1938 that a second conference would be held in 1939. Initially led by George J. Hucker of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (part of Cornell University) in Geneva, New York, a small group meeting was held on August 5, 1938 on forming an organization with an expanded group meeting in New York City on January 16, 1939 to further discuss this. The second conference was held at MIT June 29 to July 1, 1939, with Proctor as conference chair. 600 people attended this event. At the final session, the chairman of the session Fred C. Blanck of the United States Department of Agriculture, proposed that an organization be established as the Institute of Food Technologists. This was approved unanimously. Its first officers were Prescott as President, Roy C. Newton of Swift & Company in Chicago, Illinois, as Vice President, and Hucker as Secretary-Treasurer. By 1949, IFT had 3,000 members.

Growth Regional sections were established in IFT as early as 1940 in northern California (San Francisco, Bakersfield, Sacramento). The first IFT Award, the Nicholas Appert Award was established in 1942 by IFT's Chicago section with additional awards being established since then. For the first ten years, IFT officers were President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. In 1949, IFT moved into offices in Chicago and created a permanent position of Executive Secretary to run daily organizational operations. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Charles S. Lawrence was named the first Executive Secretary, a position he would hold until 1961 when he was replaced by Calvert L. Willey. During Willey's term as Executive Director (Executive Secretary 1961–1966), IFT would grow from 6,000 members in 1961 to 23,000 members in 1987. Additionally, IFT Divisions were established in 1971 with the Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Division being the first. The IFT Student Division was established in 1975, and was reorganized in 1984 to be the IFT Student Association with the chairperson serving as a member of the IFT Board of Directors.

Today The governing body of IFT consists of a Board of Directors made up of the President, President-Elect, Immediate Past-President, Treasurer, Student Association President, Student Association Immediate Past-President, Student Association President-Elect, IFT Foundation Chair, and Executive Vice President, along with twelve board members. IFT also communicates with the news media, using sixty scientists to discuss the scientific perspective on food issues. IFT is also active in the international level by its membership in the International Union of Food Science and Technology, headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Education has always been a focus of IFT, going as far back as 1941, with the desire to have uniform education standards in food technology. Education standards for undergraduate students were approved by IFT in 1966 for food science and technology. These standards were revised and updated in 1977, 1992, 2001, and 2011. Today, IFT sits on the advisory council for the International Food Protection Training Institute.

IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo IFT largest in-person gathering is IFT's Annual Meeting & Food Expo. This event, which offers more than 100 scientific and applied education sessions and an expo featuring 1,000+ exhibiting companies, regularly attracts 23,000 food professionals from more than 90 countries.

Certification IFT offers the Certified Food Scientist (CFS) designation. The CFS is the only globally-recognized certification for food scientists, and has more than 1600 certificants in 55 countries. The CFS program is officially endorsed by the Australian Institute of Food Science Technology (AIFST) as well as the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology (CIFST). Earning the CFS consists of meeting certain academic and work experience requirements and passing an exam in the following content areas:

Product development Quality assurance and quality control Food chemistry and food analysis Regulatory Food microbiology Food safety Food engineering Sensory evaluation and consumer testing It was designed to meet the International Standards Organization (ISO) 17024 standards for certification programs.

Global Food Traceability Center IFT's Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) is the global resource and authoritative voice on food traceability. Supported by its founding sponsors and guided by its advisory council, GFTC is designed to accelerate adoption and implementation of practical traceability solutions across the global food system. The center works to deliver events, research, and support services that will help to increase understanding of food traceability across four business platforms:

Research Protocols & standards Education & training Technology transfer

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Institute of Food Technologists

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Institute of Food Technologists claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Institute of Food Technologists before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Institute of Food Technologists ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Institute of Food Technologists

In research: Institute of Food Technologists appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Institute of Food Technologists in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Institute of Food Technologists is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1939 establishments in Illinois, Agricultural organizations based in the United States, Food safety organizations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Institute of Food Technologists outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Institute of Food Technologists” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Institute of Food Technologists in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Institute of Food Technologists means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Institute of Food Technologists out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Institute of Food Technologists in simple terms?

Why does Institute of Food Technologists matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Institute of Food Technologists?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Institute of Food Technologists.