Food Technology: should I choose it?

Food Availability and Selection

Food Quality

Nutrition

The Australian Food Industry

This area maps the industry itself: the agriculture and fisheries, food processing and manufacturing, food service and catering, and food retail sectors, and how a product moves between them. You study levels of operation and mechanisation, from household production through small business to large companies and multinationals, along with research and development, quality assurance, and the consumer influences pushing companies toward value-added foods. Emerging technologies sit here too, including biotechnology and genetically modified foods and ecologically sustainable production such as organic farming. The impact strand asks you to weigh effects on the environment (waste management, packaging, production techniques, transport), the economy (profit, employment) and society (lifestyle change, careers, working conditions, gender issues). Policy and legislation completes the picture, covering advisory groups and government requirements, particularly labelling law.

Food Manufacture

Food Manufacture is the technical core of the course. Production and processing covers quality and quantity control of raw materials, the function of food additives, equipment characteristics, and production systems from small-scale and manual through to automated and computerised. Quality management brings in HACCP, critical control points, work health and safety, hygiene, and the identification of food safety hazards and risks. Preservation is the heaviest strand: why food is preserved, what causes deterioration and spoilage (environmental, enzymatic and microbial), the preservation principles of temperature control, moisture restriction, exclusion of air and pH manipulation, and the processes built on them — canning, drying, pasteurising, freezing and fermenting. Packaging, storage and distribution closes the area, covering packaging materials and current developments such as active packaging, modified atmosphere packaging and sous vide.

Food Product Development

This area follows a product from idea to shelf. You analyse the factors shaping development: the external macro-environment of economic, political, ecological and technological conditions, and the internal micro-environment of personnel expertise, production facilities, financial position and company image, usually organised through a SWOT analysis. You classify the reasons for and types of development — market, consumer, societal, technological and profitability drivers producing line extensions, me-toos and new-to-world products. The development steps are examinable in detail: design brief, idea generation and screening, market research, product specifications, feasibility study, production process development, and prototype development and testing through sensory evaluation, consumer testing, packaging tests and storage trials. Marketing plans then cover the four Ps of product planning, price structure, place and distribution, and the promotional program.

Contemporary Nutrition Issues

This area connects diet to health outcomes and to industry behaviour. Diet and health in Australia covers the physical effects and economic costs of malnutrition, both under- and over-nutrition, diet-related disorders, nutritional considerations for specific groups, and the roles individuals, community groups, the food industry, government and private agencies play in promoting health. Nutritionally modified foods deals with functional and fortified foods created to meet consumer demand, while active non-nutrients and supplements covers phytochemicals, probiotics, fibre and the place of supplements alongside a balanced diet. Influences on nutritional status ties it together: diet's role in obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, food sensitivity, intolerance and allergy, and the lifestyle, cultural, social and media factors, including ethical issues in food advertising, that shape what people actually eat.