FNH 303 - Food Product Development

Course Details 

Course                 FNH 303 [3-0-0] (3 hours/week of lecture)

Prerequisites      Introductory Statistics (LFS 252); Food Chemistry (FNH 301)

Term/year          Winter term 2 2024 (January – April 2025)

Class day/time   Wednesday/Friday 10:30 am– 12:00 noon

Class location     UBC Vancouver Campus > Orchard Commons -  ORCH-Floor 3-Room 3074

Instructor           Anubhav Pratap-Singh

Email                   anubhav.singh@ubc.ca

Office                  FNH Building, Room 213, 2205 East Mall.

Office Hours      For other detailed questions/issues/discussions, the instructor can meet via zoom for class-related queries due to the ease of screen-sharing features. Please contact the instructor to arrange a meeting.

TAs                      Amir Amiri amiram67@mail.ubc.ca

Syllabus version Jan 8th, 2025

 Instructor’s Biographical Statement: Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh is the Director of the Dan On Food and Beverage Innovation Centre, and an Associate Professor of Food Processing and Product Development at UBC.  A chemical engineer by education (BTech+MTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2011), and a food scientist by training & practice (PhD in 2015 from McGill University, postdoc from University of Toronto in 2016), Dr. Pratap-Singh sits on the UBC Vancouver Senate and is a member of the UBC Academic Policy Committee.

Dr. Pratap-Singh's main research focuses on exploring novel approaches that: a) minimize the deleterious effect of food processing on food quality & nutrition, and b) overcome the biological barriers to the absorption of nutritional components of food. Some of the major research directions in his laboratory include:

1. developing non-thermal (pulsed light, ultrasound & cold plasma) technologies for the decontamination of food products,
2. using extrusion & other plant-based meat development technologies,
3. fortification of tea, salt & other food products with multiple nutrients (iron, zinc, vitamin B, folic acid etc.) together,
4. developing buccal and sublingual sprays/tablets for delivery of insulin & other bioceuticals orally bypassing GI-tract
5. development of encapsulated rhACE2 for treating mild symptom CoVID-19 patients
6. upcycling of food industry wastes into value-added products, biodegradable & packaging solutions for the food industry,  

Course Objectives

New product development is an integral part of the food industry. This course will introduce you to concepts in food product formulation and development. The function of various food additives approaches to experimental design, and sensory evaluation will be addressed in lectures and applied in a theoretical case study.

Course Format and Activities

The course will present lectures, activities and support materials that will introduce you to concepts used in food product development, with the overarching principle of food safety. These will be presented in 4 modules, and each module will be assessed with quizzes. The modules and concepts that will be covered are:

1. Introduction to Product Development (Wednesday Lectures 1-3)
   1. Concept development
   2. Project management
   3. Formulation
   4. Shelf-life testing
   5. Labelling
   6. Sustainability

2. Design of Experiment (Wednesday Lectures 4-6)
   1. Factorial, response surface and mixture designs
   2. Selection of an appropriate experimental design
   3. Evaluation and interpretation of statistical data

3. Sensory Evaluation (Wednesday Lectures 7-9)
   1. Design of an appropriate evaluation - discriminative, descriptive, hedonic
   2. Evaluation and interpretation of statistical data

4. Additive roles, mechanisms, and properties (covered by TA in Friday lectures)
   1. Introduction and Status in Canada
   2. Stabilizers and Emulsifiers
   3. Antimicrobial agents
   4. Colours
   5. Flavours

All these concepts will be used to complete two group reports and a case study critique. Students, working in teams, will apply the concepts to their own reports and product development case. Teams will be given class time to develop their case. It is expected that all students will participate in all sessions set aside for the group work.

The original format of the course is in-person classes, with the supporting materials for the course available on Canvas. While the instructor will not be able to record himself, students are free to record in-person classes. In case some of the classes are moved online, recorded lectures will be made available online.

Learning Outcomes

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

• Apply the steps involved in developing a food product safely and sustainably, including formulation, labelling, packaging, regulatory requirements, evaluation of shelf-life, and sensory evaluation.
• Differentiate between the characteristics of various food additives to select the additive appropriate for a specific
• Choose an appropriate experimental design for product development based on the objective of the study, number of factors, and other practical considerations
• Design and carry out an appropriate sensory evaluation of a product, with statistical analysis, to meet a specific
• Work effectively as a group member and communicate information clearly and logically in oral and written formats.

Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Essential Learning Objectives (ELOs) Covered in this Course

UBC’s Food Science Program is one of few institutions in Canada that are approved by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), an internationally recognized leader in undergraduate education standards for degrees in Food Science. Programs with this approval badge are recognized as delivering a comprehensive Food Science education that covers 55 essential learning outcomes (ELOs) established by the IFT organization. The ELOs below are covered in this course.

Course Resources

Course Software Resource: You will be using Minitab for the Design of Experiments aspects of the course. There is a free 30 day trial of Minitab available online ( https://www.minitab.com/en-us/products/minitab/free-trial/). You may need to use Minitab for longer than 30 days. You can rent Minitab from https://onthehub.com/minitab/ for ~ 44 CAD for a 6 month period if you wish. 

Readings: The resources below are optional and can be accessed if you want additional material on the topics covered in this course. Other required resources are noted in the Course Schedule for each module, and available on Canvas.

• New Food Product Development: from concept to marketplace. Fuller, G. W. 2005 Boca Raton, CRC Press. Boston, New York, Washington
• Creating New Foods. The Product Developer’s Mary D Earle and Richard L Eaerle.

https://nzifst.org.nz/resources/creatingnewfoods/index.htm

• Case Studies in Food Product Development Edited by M Earle and R Earle, Massey University, New Zealand Woodhead Publishing Series in Food Science, Technology and Nutrition No. 153 (available on-line, https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9781845692605/case-studies-in-food-product-development
• Experimental Design for Formulation by Wendel Smith (available via ubc.ca)
• StatSoft, (2013). Electronic Statistics Textbook. Tulsa, OK: StatSoft. WEB: https://www.freetechbooks.com/electronic-statistics-textbook-t932.html
• The chemistry of food additives and preservatives Titus A.M. Msagati. Oxford ; Ames, Iowa : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 (available via ubc.ca)
• https://foodinsight.org/category/ingredients/
• Lawless, T. and Heymann, H. 1998 Sensory Evaluation of Food: Principles and Practices. Chapman and Hall, Toronto (available via library.ubc.ca)
• https://support.hunterlab.com/hc/en-us/sections/200832645-Application-Notes

Course Assessment

*Note: a peer factor of 5% is included as the casework component of the course. Each group member will rate other group members' quality of participation on group assignments and casework on a scale of 0 to 5.0.

Late Assignment Policy

Due dates for assignments are clearly noted in the syllabus and in the assignments posted on Canvas. Late assignments will be accepted up to 3 days late, with a 10% mark penalty per day (i.e. an assignment handed in one day late will have 10% subtracted from the grade). If you anticipate having a problem meeting a deadline, please contact me to discuss the situation.

Quizzes

Short (15 min) quizzes will be completed by each individual student on Canvas, online or in-class. These quizzes are open book, but must be completed without collaboration. The objective of this approach is to ensure that basic concepts are understood by all students.

Quizzes will be marked automatically and the marks posted on Canvas, but if you notice a problem with the marking, please contact your TA, who will review it.

Note – if you miss one quiz for a valid reason, there is no issue as best 5 out of 6 quizzes will be counted towards overall score. A second missed quiz, without discussing with me prior to the quiz, will be given a mark of 0.

If you run into a technical problem accessing a quiz on-line, please email me immediately anubhav.singh@ubc.ca

Assignments

The assignments are posted on Canvas Assignments. The assignments are activities designed to help you understand course concepts and use the appropriate apps. You must complete and hand each of the assignments described. The 4 assignments and their due dates are indicated below:

1. Module 1 Ed.Ted and Accelerated Shelf-Life Assignment (5% weightage)
2. Module 2 Design of Experiments Assignment (5% weightage)
3. Module 3 Sensory Data Statistical Evaluation Assignment (5% weightage)
4. Module 4 Additives Assignment (5% weightage)

Case Study

Each group must submit the following items for the case study:

• Product Selection Worksheet 
• Written report -(10%) 

• Critique of an assigned group (5%) 

• Peer Evaluation (5%)

You will be assigned to groups of ~5 students. You will apply the information from the course content in a THEORTICAL food product development case to simulate some of the issues that can arise during product development, and to practice and demonstrate your mastery of the course content.

The product must include 'sustainability' as an element. Each group must select specific criteria for their product. The objective of the case-study, may be:

• New product without a prototype in the market
• Expansion of an existing product line
• Match to a product already in the market
• Another objective – please confirm with your Teaching Assistant

Please get feedback on your ideas from me or your teaching assistant. You can consider recent nutritional trends/topics or other trends that could impact food products (e.g. lifestyle issues; demographics). You may check IFT top 10 food trends or http://www.mintel.com/global-food-and-drink-trends/ for ideas.

Each group must complete the “Product Selection Worksheet” and submit on Canvas. The group needs to select their product and approach relatively quickly so that there will be enough time to research and develop the details of the case.

Each group will submit a written report for the case study. Details on what is required in each report are given below, and additional information is in the marking rubrics for each report posted on Canvas.

1. Case Report: The written case report will detail:

i.         Executive Summary 10%

Brief summary of product description, target market, processing required, experimental designs used, sensory evaluation is used, shelf-life determination, safety considerations, and any ‘other’ considerations.

• 500 word-limit

ii.        Product Characterization 20%:

• Clearly list the objective of the product development (if appropriate, how and why it will be improved or changed)
• Describe the target market for your new product (demographic characteristics)
• Describe any specific regulatory requirements/standards of identity for this product if they exist in For example, if you are proposing a low-fat version of an existing product, you need to specify the change in fat content required by the Canadian Food and Drug regulations that allow a product to be denoted as “low fat”
• Describe all the ingredients of the product, with the function of If you are proposing to use any new food additives / ingredients in the product, including the function and rationale for selection of specific components (e.g. why the specific emulsifier or colour is most appropriate)
• Indicate sources of all additives/ingredients and standards required (quality, chemical, microbiological)
• Consider the Canadian laws and regulations that pertain to food and your product specifically
• Use appropriate literature to support the information

iii.      Experimental Design 20%:

• Step 1: Fractional factorial as a screening method for selecting appropriate factors for further investigation in Step You will justify select the factors and levels based on your knowledge, literature information, and from a logical ‘best guess’.

    Step 2: Using factors and levels from Step 1, optimize your product using response surface and/or mixture design (simplex, centroid). The “optimum” from Step 2 will be used for the nutritional analysis of the ‘final’ theoretical product.

• For each step in the experimental design, the group must select and provide justification for the factors to be varied during the experiments

the upper and lower limits of each factor

the responses used to evaluate the experiments. You will likely have both analytical assays and sensory evaluations as responses. Do NOT include any details on the sensory evaluation that will be carried out in this report. These will be included in report #2. Simply indicate where/when you will be using sensory evaluation as a response for the experimental design.

    Since you are not doing the actual experiments, you will justify select the ‘optimum’ based on your knowledge, literature information, and from a logical ‘best guess’.

• Use Minitab to obtain output of the experimental designs. You will NOT have any data for You are only required to present the design(s) you will use (factors, levels, type of responses, number of experiments/replication).

iv. Sensory Evaluation 20% :

Each product will require sensory evaluation as one of the approaches to evaluate the product There will likely be more than one type of sensory evaluation that is required, depending on the objectives of the case. Your approach should be realistic and do-able.

• • Describe the objective of each of the sensory evaluations used and how each will help achieve the product development
  • Describe details of each sensory evaluation

    Recruitment and number of panelists that will be used, standards and training if necessary, and give examples of score cards that will be used.

• Describe the appropriate statistical evaluation of the data Note that it is not necessary to give the Ho and Ha for each experiment.
• Actions to be followed based on outcome of the sensory evaluation
• Appropriate literature used to support

v. Shelf Life of the Final Product 10%:

• Describe the required or expected shelf life of the This may be done on the final optimal formulation.
• Describe the approach used to determine the shelf-life of the product Times and temperatures used (as appropriate)

Number of samples / replication that will be needed Analyses that will be used for assessment of the product

vi.      Other considerations 10%:

• Provide a Canadian nutrition facts panel, based on the “best” formulation from Step 2 Report #1. You are required to select the “best” formulation, based on a rational evaluation of the literature and your own experience

    Include an appendix with the calculations used to calculate this

• Describe specific food safety considerations for this product and how these will be addressed
• Give an example of the packaging and label will be used for the product
• Waste management/environmental issues that may be associated with manufacture of your product
• Issues related to scale up of your product

vii.  Appropriate supporting references (5%)

with a bibliography section formatted in the style of the “Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry” (see http://pubs.acs.org/page/jafcau/submission/reference-guidelines.html )

viii.      Grammar, spelling, presentation (5%)

Case Report Presentation Guide (1 per group): The details of the case reports to be followed are:

• Use a size 12 font (Times or Calibri); 5 line spacing; 1 inch margins on pages
• Title page:

Group members first and last names; Product objective, Commodity and Experimental Designs used; date report is submitted.

• Second page:

    Signed by each group member, with a description of what their contribution was to the group work for the case and the written report

• Submit one electronic copy on Canvas
• Page limit for each report – 20 pages, not including the title page and second page. This includes references, figures, tables
• See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsguide.40204 for tips on how to format an effective table
• See grading rubric on the Canvas assignment page for how each report will be graded

Critique of Assigned Case Report (5%)

Each group will be assigned case. The critique of the case should be presented as a report in paragraph format with appropriate section headings. The critique must include discussion of the positive aspects of the material presented as well as the areas that need to be improved. In all cases, you must provide a clear justification for each point in your assessment. You will not get marks for length but for critical analysis.

• Use a size 12 font (Times or Calibri); 1.5 spacing; minimum 1-inch margins on pages. Maximum words:
• Title page:
  • Group members who wrote the report - first and last names; Product objective, Commodity and Experimental Design used
  • Your Group members - first and last names
  • Date report is submitted

• Examples of points to discuss in your critique: Your critique can include but should not be limited to, the following:
  • Objective/ Product Description:

Was product concept clearly presented

Was the formulation and the additives used in the product appropriate? Will the product be legal to sell in Canada as described?

• • Experimental Design

Experiments presented in sufficient detail to understand? Was the appropriate design selected for the objective?

Realistic approach to replication/ statistical evaluation?

• • Sensory Evaluation

Experiments presented in sufficient detail to understand? Appropriate test selected for the objective?

• • Shelf-life

Was an appropriate approach used to obtain the shelf life?

• • Other considerations

Was the nutritional label accurate and did it contain the required information? Were appropriate safety aspects for the product addressed?

Was packaging and label appropriate

See grading rubric on the Canvas Rubric on Canvas for how the critique will be evaluated.

Peer Evaluation (5%)

You will grade each other group member on a scale of 0 to 5.

4-5: very active and great quality contribution.

3-4: active with good quality contribution

2-3: less active than others with average quality contribution

1-2: less active with low quality contribution

0-1: no activity with little to no contribution

Final exam

Please note that there is NO final exam.

Mid-term exams (50%)

The course will have one in-person mid-term on Wednesday 27th March 2023 from 10:30am-12:00noon (75 min exam). If for some reason this dates doesn't work for you, please notify the instructor before the course-drop deadline, in order to seek accommodation.

Mid-Term Exam will cover Modules 1, 2, 3 and 4. If the exams are in-person, they will be closed-book. Failure to follow the expected guidelines with respect to academic honesty may result in disciplinary action. Questions will mainly be short answer type and will also include various types of questions (e.g. true/false, long and short-answer, match the following, fill in the blanks, short numericals, statistical data interpretation etc.). You cannot copy and paste material from any source, or re-type material directly from source as an answer to an exam question. You must compose answers in your own words. You will not need access to Minitab.

I recommend reviewing the Learning Outcomes from each lecture as a way to prepare for the exam 

If you run into a technical problem during the exam, please email me immediately anubhav.singh@ubc.ca

 Learning Analytics

Learning analytics includes the collection and analysis of data about learners to improve teaching and learning. This course will be using the following learning technologies: Canvas. This tool captures data about your activity and provide information that can be used to improve the quality of teaching and learning. In this course, I plan to use analytics data to:

• View overall class progress
• Review statistics on course content being accessed to support improvements in the course
• Monitor adherence to academic integrity by applying analytics on quizzes, assignments and on-line exams.

Academic integrity

The academic enterprise is founded on honesty, civility, and integrity. All UBC students are expected to behave as honest and responsible members of an academic community. At the most basic level, this means submitting only original work done by you and acknowledging all sources of information or ideas and attributing them to others as required. This also means you should not cheat, copy, or mislead others about what is your work.

The student must learn, understand and follow the standards for academic honesty. Students must be aware that standards at the University of British Columbia may be different from those in secondary schools or at other institutions.

Violations of academic integrity lead to the breakdown of the academic enterprise, and therefore serious actions are taken. Plagiarism or cheating may result in a mark of zero on an assignment, exam, or course. More serious

consequences may apply if the matter is referred to the President’s Advisory Committee on Student Discipline. Academic misconduct may result in a one-year suspension from the University and a notation of academic discipline on the student's record.

The UBC library has a useful Academic Integrity website that explains what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. If a student is in any doubt as to the standard of academic honesty in a particular course or assignment, then the student must consult with the instructor as soon as possible. A more detailed description of academic integrity, including the University’s policies and procedures, may be found in the Academic Calendar. All course work may be submitted to Turnitin.com for review.

University Policies

UBC provides resources to support student learning and to maintain healthy lifestyles but recognizes that sometimes crises arise and so there are additional resources to access including those for survivors of sexual violence. UBC values respect for the person and ideas of all members of the academic community. Harassment and discrimination are not tolerated nor is suppression of academic freedom. UBC provides appropriate accommodation for students with disabilities and religious observances. UBC values academic honesty and students are expected to acknowledge the ideas generated by others and to uphold the highest academic standards in all of their actions.

Details of the policies and how to access support are available on the UBC Senate website.

Course Schedule with Required Readings and Activities