Laura Farrell FIFST, Company Nutritionist at Tesco
Professional background
I have worked in retail now for over 15 years, at Tesco. I graduated with a First-Class BSc degree in Nutrition and Food Science. My early career began in technical, development and agriculture roles, across a number of fresh food areas such as meat and poultry, bakery, desserts, olives and antipasti. Since 2015 I have been solely in nutrition, developing strategy, implementing regulation and supporting wider health ambitions across the group. During that time, I have become a registered nutritionist (RNutr) with the Association for Nutrition, a Fellow of IFST and in a voluntary capacity, sit on the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) Scientific Advisory Committee, Nutritionists in Industry Committee, as well the IFST Food Science and Nutrition Special Interest Group (SIG).
Can you walk me through a typical day in your role as a nutritionist in the food industry?
Firstly, no day is the same! I often say that the role of a retail nutritionist is a jack of all trades, and you’ll wear many hats. As with many jobs within the food industry, you’ll have many emails to respond to – some kicking off some exciting projects, while others may be responding to issues that arise or providing nutrition insight to a project or query. Meetings can be very varied too! Some can be working alongside the development teams, talking about improving products to meet reformulation targets, improving their nutritional profile, or talking through regulation applications. It is important to be the eyes and ears of new and emerging trends, themes, regulations or customer sentiment too – so making time to know what’s going on in the world around you is important too, and can take some time to digest.
How does your membership of the IFST Food Science and Nutrition SIG contribute to your professional development and networking?
Contributing to the SIG is both rewarding and supportive of my career and job role. Day to day, it can be easy to keep within the same area of the industry we operate in, but having the opportunity to connect through IFST, and learn from such a mixed group of experts from various industry and academic backgrounds, is great. This coming together of minds provides a great breadth to our discussions.
What are your primary responsibilities and objectives as a nutritionist within your organisation?
My primary objective in my role is to support our customers make healthier choices to support their overall well-being and health. How I do this is multifaceted! I am responsible for setting the nutrition strategy for the business. I oversee the risks and opportunities for us in a nutrition space, which relies upon me seeking customer insight as well as keeping abreast of the latest in nutrition science and population health. This also requires me to keep up-to-date with regulatory changes, from labels to how we sell products in-store and online.
How do you stay up-to-date with the latest developments in food science and nutrition research?
I use a wide variety of websites and newsletters to keep up to speed, from trade bodies to government updates. I’ve recently been working on the IFST resource toolkit and found this to be a great source of information, although I often find the best updates and understanding come from speaking with my network. Picking up the phone, or dropping an email to someone who may know a bit more about a subject, can help me get the information I need. Working on your network is such a great investment – attending webinars and ideally, in-person meetings and events, where possible, strengthens these connections.
Can you describe a recent project or initiative you worked on that involved applying your nutrition expertise to improve food products or processes?
With the drive to encourage our customers to consider more sustainable options, we reviewed the nutrition profile of our dairy-alternative drinks. At the same time there was an increased focus on some of the important micronutrients in our diet, in particular iodine. Iodine is typically found in dairy products such as milk and dairy products, as well as fish and seafood. To support customers' access to more dietary sources of iodine, through fortification, we added iodine to our dairy-alternative products, alongside other vitamins and minerals you’d typically see in dairy milk or are important as part of a vegan diet.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a nutritionist in the food industry, and how do you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges, as a representative of a specialist subject area, is that you can be a lone voice in a room. It is important to understand your role within the team, but also be true to the value of what you can bring to the group. Being rooted in your purpose and being clear on your message helps deliver your intent.
How do you collaborate with other professionals, such as food scientists, chefs, and marketers, to ensure the food products meet nutritional standards and consumer expectations?
Creating healthy food must be done in collaboration with several specialities. We combine multiple roles to ensure we are meeting the customers’ expectations of tasty, healthy food. Throughout the development of a product, the process will gain input from trends experts, market experts, customer insight experts, process technologists, regulatory experts etc. We operate within a milestone process which brings together this expertise at the right moments, but equally, they are always on hand in case we need further support.
How do you assess and evaluate the nutritional content and quality of food products, and what criteria do you use to determine their suitability for consumers?
At Tesco we have a target that 65% of our food and drink sales are to come from healthy foods. To define healthy foods, we use the UK Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) The nutrient profiling model - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). This model reviews a product’s saturated fat, salt and sugar content, as well as the fibre, fruit and vegetable content. A product that scores below a certain threshold counts as ‘healthy’. A food is considered ‘healthy’ if it scores 3 points or less, and for drinks it’s 0 points, or less. We use other forms of nutrient profiling too, such as for nutrition and health claims on product labels, or develop bespoke nutrition criteria for our health brands, to ensure we are meeting our customers’ expectations of health.
What are some emerging trends, or developments, in the field of food science and nutrition that you find particularly exciting or impactful?
Gut health has been emerging for some time. It’s true we still need to learn a lot more but what we do know is that fibre has a great role to play. Fibre has long been the unsung hero in nutrition but with gut health being such a trendy topic to so many people, we could get some great traction. It’s great to see fibre being associated with fun, bright, vibrant, tasty dishes too - packed with vegetables, pulses, grains, nuts and seeds and not just ‘brown’ food! This has played hand in hand with the move to increase plants in our diet, for both human and planetary health.
What advice would you give to someone aspiring to become a nutritionist in the food industry and become involved in professional organisations like the IFST?
Join us! There are a lot of places you can take your nutrition knowledge in the food industry. I think when you leave university with a passion for health and nutrition, you are keen to only be known as a nutritionist but the early days of my career, in a much broader technical role, significantly prepared me for taking on a more focused nutrition role later. I had a greater understanding of the realities of food production systems and how I could influence them to change for the better. It is very rare for you to be able to make a change in nutrition without impacting other areas, such as regulations or a product taste/texture profile, and gaining this breadth of knowledge and networking is vital for a well-rounded approach. IFST can offer that breadth through resources and the events are great for networking.
How did you start your career in the food industry and what prompted you to join IFST?
I always had an interest in food and health, but I was intrigued with the ‘why?’ and that led me to be more curious about science. I studied Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Reading where I could combine both. After much persuasion from my tutors, I was encouraged to consider a year in the food industry, and I am glad I did. I had taken other part-time jobs, but working and delivering change in the food industry already before completing my degree spurred me through my last year. After my BSc, I applied for PhDs but decided returning to work in industry was probably the best route for me. What started as a short-term contract at Tesco now stands at over 15 years!
I joined IFST to keep my connection to the wider technical agenda, while sharing what I could from a nutrition point view, reflecting my insight from retail too.
What do you think are the biggest challenges ahead of us in terms of the role of nutrition in the food industry?
Sadly, I think misinformation will remain a huge challenge for nutritionists. There is a lot of incorrect nutrition and health information available from so many sources which impacts consumers' beliefs and food choices. While I think scrutiny of the food system is important to ensure food standards remain high, when healthy food is being wrongfully challenged for health, it makes the challenge of supporting customers to have healthier diets even harder