After hours spent experimenting and adjusting ingredients, Julia Wangsgard (NDFS ’26) finally transformed her innovative recipe into a finished dairy-based product. Each change mattered, and with every iteration the product improved, leaving Wangsgard feeling like a true food scientist bringing new product ideas to life. The experience reinforced for her that food chemistry isn’t just something to study—it’s a tool to meaningfully create and test new food products.
For Wangsgard, product development in food chemistry is about designing solutions that can genuinely improve people’s health and everyday lives. Participating in a competition held by the Intermountain Milk Processors Association, she had the opportunity to develop and present a dairy-based product. Teams create a novel food item that contains at least 51 percent dairy and does not already exist on the market. Wangsgard's team created MozzaCasas, which are fresh mozzarella-covered cheesecake bites that are similar to a burrata. Coming up with a new product is exciting to Wangsgard. She sees food science as the perfect blend of science and math—both subjects she loves—combined with a touch of creativity, helping her form the perfect recipe.
Wangsgard is also enthralled by the production process. “A lot of it is problem solving. You're trying to create new products, and you're also trying to improve the ones that you already have to decrease costs because of the ever-fluctuating economy,” she says. This experience revealed how quality assurance and product development come together to turn abstract science into something tangible. Wangsgard learned how important efficient and sustainable food production processes are for ensuring food security, reducing waste, and supporting the health and well-being of communities worldwide.
A passion for food science also led Wangsgard to participate in a collegiate food science trivia competition hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists. Her knowledge and dedication helped the team earn the opportunity to travel to Canada to compete.
Throughout her undergraduate career, Wangsgard began to consider the consumer’s perspective in understanding nutrition labels and ingredients lists. Often consumers feel overwhelmed by the information listed on product packaging and confused about which products are healthy. “If you took an apple and you created a food label for it, all the different chemicals that are in an apple would look really scary too,” she explains. Wangsgard hopes to help create new products that are better for consumers and help them understand the purpose of the ingredients in their food.
Wangsgard further expanded her practical skills through conducting research in Dr. Shintaro Pang’s lab where she focused her efforts on detecting micro and nanoplastics using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. She also assisted in research regarding probiotics in yogurt, which are beneficial bacteria that help support digestion and enhance immunity. Wangsgard helped write a paper about their findings which was published in The Royal Society of Chemistry.
Moving forward, Wangsgard plans to continue honing her skills as a graduate student at BYU. She hopes to keep working on dairy-product development, and she is dedicated to helping find ways to reduce dairy-product waste. She would also like to develop food products that are safe for people with food allergies or food intolerances. She credits the instillment of this service-mindset to her time at BYU, where service is always an ingredient in success. Grounded in her passion for education, innovation, sustainability, and inclusive nutrition, Wangsgard aims to help shape the future of food products by increasing the efficiency of the food supply and developing products that are safe, effective, nutritious, and enjoyable.