Senior scientist, Unilever Food and Health Research Institute, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands
My PhD is in nutritional biochemistry, and my thesis research was on lipoprotein metabolism. After my PhD, an opportunity came up for a post-doctoral fellowship in Philadelphia, at a centre that does taste and smell work. So I moved into the very different area of sensory perception. A few years later, I moved to England to join a multidisciplinary group of experimental and social psychologists focussed on determinants of food choice and intake. I was, and still am, scientifically oriented towards issues around appetite and weight control.
From America to Europe, the big culture change wasn't so much geographical as scientific, moving gradually from biochemistry towards behaviour. My research was showing that you could do more to influence nutritional status by changing food than by trying to change people. Changing people is hard. Changing food is, relatively speaking much easier. Of course, though, you really have to change both. The desire to apply this knowledge motivated my decision to join the Consumer Science group in Unilever. That was in 1998.
In Unilever, I initially focussed on how and why people acquire food preferences. How do you capture them experimentally, and how can they be influenced? After two years, an opportunity arose to lead a new project, in the area of weight control. So I moved departments, went back to being a 'real' nutritionist and the circle was complete. Weight control makes perfect use of my background, a mix of biology and behaviour. It's got all the elements of taste, food acceptance and control of food intake, plus it's got the energy metabolism side, which takes me back to my biochemical roots.
What I would like to achieve at Unilever is to be part of a team that creates innovative and beneficial products that are successes for us and for our consumers. I guess that's every industry research & development person’s dream: to see a successful product out there and know they were part of it.
