IFT17 Symposium Honoring Alina Szczesniak and Malcolm Bourne

This past year, we lost two respected colleagues and friends who spent their lifetimes making invaluable contributions to the science of food texture analysis. Dr. Alina Surmacka Szczesniak, a food scientist, principal at General Foods, and a founding editor of Journal of Texture Studies, developed the original TPA parameters as part of the sensory work she conducted in the early 1960’s at General Foods’ Technical Center. Dr. Malcolm Bourne (Cornell University Professor Emeritus of Food Science and Technology and the author of “Food Texture and Viscosity: Concept and Measurement”) published a body of papers which adopted those TPA concepts and showed the food industry how it can use instruments to quantify critical textural properties. Malcolm’s decades of work and collaborations with scientists around the world became the foundation for our industry involving texture analysis.

This year’s IFT annual meeting offers a unique opportunity to hear more about their work. On Monday, 6/26/2017, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm. the IFT will host a symposium titled “Understanding Food Texture: A Tribute to the Pioneering Work of Alina Szczesniak and Malcolm Bourne.” The symposium will honor their enormous contributions to the understanding of food texture and its importance to the food industry. The symposium will include:

A review of Alina Szczesniak’s innovations and the current state of sensory texture measurement.
A review Malcolm Bourne’s contributions and the progress that has been made in the field of instrumental measurement.
A discussion of the business impact of texture and the claims that are being made by food producers.

To read more about the history of TPA and Drs. Szczesniak and Bourne, please check out our “Overview of Texture Profile Analysis (TPA).”