Junior year of high school, Lia sat in chemistry class, listening intently to Mr. Ahring describe the building blocks of proteins. A few hours later, she experienced this same lesson in her food science class. The connection between foods and chemistry? Amino acids. This epiphany and a sit-down pep talk with her chemistry teacher ignited a flame that would catalyze her journey to food science. 

Early childhood is an important time for learning about nutrition and establishing healthy eating behaviors. Young children rely on parents to provide food options, and the availability of food in the home affects their dietary choices.

March is National Nutrition Month™, an educational and informational campaign sponsored by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This year’s theme is “Beyond the Table,” encouraging people to think about nutrition from farm to fork, including food production and distribution to grocery stores and farmers markets.

Leafy green vegetables are important sources of dietary fiber and nutrients, but they can harbor harmful pathogens. In particular, lettuce has often been involved in outbreaks of foodborne illness across the U.S.

The drug finasteride, also known as Propecia or Proscar, treats male pattern baldness and enlarged prostate in millions of men worldwide.

 Zeynep Madak Erdogan, Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) Associate Director for Education and Sylvia D. Stroup Scholar of Nutrition and Cancer, received the prestigious 2024 Michael B. Kastan Award for Research Excellence given by the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) Molecular Cancer Research (MCR) journal.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have found a way to boost ethanol production via yeast fermentation, a standard method for converting plant sugars into biofuels. Their approach, detailed in the journal Nature Communications, relies on careful timing and a tight division of labor among synthetic yeast strains to yield more ethanol per unit of plant sugars than previous approaches have achieved. 

Scientists in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a portable, self-powered ultraviolet-C device called the Tribo-sanitizer that can inactivate two of the bacteria responsible for many foodborne illnesses and deaths.

In honor of National Cookie Day, Alyssa Deolitsis reflects on kickstarting her own business with help from her degree.

Since 1973, food industry professionals have bolstered their skills and furthered their careers through the Master of Science in Food Science (MSFS) program in the