Changes To My Study Programme

When I entered the university I had a mental image of the Medical School of the University of Chile, because I did a pre-university in that place and I loved it. Very spacious, full of classrooms and large spaces, green areas. What is expected to be a faculty. But it is a different reality in our faculty. Beginning because it is not prepared to receive even 40% of the students enrolled annually. Imagine that one day be 100%. Horrible.

The problem with the curriculum of my career, and apparently of the 4 careers present in the faculty, is that we do not have subjects from the beginning about our career until the third year, which demotivates a lot at first.

In my case, the two introductory subjects to the carreer were based on listening to the anecdotes of the year 1800 of the head of career and make reports on a topic x. If it were not for the Food Engineering Students' Center, we would not have had a visit to Carozzi so we could see exactly what a food engineer is doing.

Classrooms are poorly distributed and sometimes there is overcrowding in classes due to lack of space. Although sometimes we are 6 students in a room for 60 people, what kind of criteria is that?
We do not have a casino to have a proper lunch, we should not have to use the other faculties for something as basic and necessary as eating. The surfaces where you work in the lab are a shame. The food laboratories do not have basic implements such as juicer and before they didn'
t have microwaves either and the students had to supply them with the money from their pockets. Anyway…

The use of technology, for some subjects and for some teachers, is used quite well. Sometimes you learn more in this more didactic way than a 3-hour chair.

The teaching methods should improve. Personally I have had teachers who dedicate the whole class to read the power point presentation, something that can perfectly be done from home. I learn more on my own than when I go to classes. And I'm not the only one with the same problem. There are people in senior years who complain about the same thing.

Sorry not sorry :)

Summer Holidays

Most of my paternal family likes southern Chile more than the North, perhaps because they were raised in that part of the country. Although they were born in Santiago, they lived a humble life, similar to the one of field. In the summers they went by train to Los Angeles, where my great-grandfather lived. And back they brought fruits, vegetables and other things from there.

I guess that's why every time I'm asked where I'm going for the summer vacation, my answer is the South.

If I have to choose between traveling and staying at home, I prefer the second option. But it depends on many things, if someone can take care of my cats, where are we going to stay, who is going to go, if the university lets us have vacations or the semester lasts forever…  

But generally if it is to the south of Chile I accept immediately and I worry for the other things later.

This summer I would like to go Chiloé again, I love the rain, the calm, the people, the food… So I’m trying to convince my parents to go there.  Visit the places that we couldn’t see, go further than Chonchi.

But if I stay all the summer at home… Read the books I have kept waiting, finally watch that tv series, play videogames all day all night, sleep, go the museum, the theater or the cinema with my friends… Yeah, that’s good summer.

“Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.” Bryant McGill

Sugar addiction

Yes, sugar. I dare say that most agree that the world is much sweeter with sugar. The coffee of each morning tastes better, it fills us with energy in the soda of the midday, and accompanies the snacks that we like so much. Sugar is undoubtedly a part of our lives. But at the same time, it kills more people than weapons, and it triggers more and more alarms in health organizations in every corner of the world. While the tobacco informs each package of the consequences of its consumption with messages of the style "Smoking can kill" or "Smoking damages your health and that of those who surround you", sugar goes unnoticed in products that will deceive us with its flavor, attractive appearance and good marketing.

Constant and prolonged consumption can cause neurological and psychiatric problems in adulthood. People are consuming too much sugar. But consuming sugar makes our lives happy and there is a reason: different research claims that their long-term use would cause a reduction in dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to emotions and reward, so people would need to ingest more of it to keep their levels constant.

Do you think you can switch to artificial sweeteners and end the root problem? Think again ... One study found that artificial sweeteners like saccharin can produce effects similar to those obtained with cane sugar, highlighting the importance of reevaluating our relationship with sweetened food.

And that's not all ... Like other addictive drugs, abstinence from chronic sucrose exposure can result in an imbalance in dopamine levels and can be as difficult as completely ending consumption.

For my career this issue is important as we are in charge of the health of the general population, everyone needs to eat. That is why different campaigns have been carried out to reduce sugar, carbohydrates, salt and fats in foods that are marketed throughout the country.

Master's degree in Food Sciences

As I said in my previous blog, I plan to continue studying after university, specialize in the area of food safety and hygiene. For me, and surely for many other people, it is important that once a profession is obtained it is followed in a search process, feel the need to specialize in a greater depth than could be obtained through extension courses. By means of a postgraduate it is possible to accede to the last available knowledge in a certain area at world-wide level and to learn the advances of the discipline.

Currently there are many masters in this area. I recently found a website (Masterstudies) that allows you to compare different masters programs throughout the world. I've found 66 results in Food Sciences, of these, 18 in Food Safety. All of them are full-time and face-to-face classes, although they have the possibility of taking the course online or part-time. It is quite flexible. What I liked most of all is that you can see even the courses that are done in other countries. Studying abroad is a real plus in our society.

One of the courses that is repeated the most is the Master's Degree in Management of Safety and Food Quality. The focus of the program is on new and emerging issues in the field of food safety, focusing on the evolution of analytical approaches to monitoring and regulating food safety, authenticity and safety.

We need a greater focus on improving all this because of the recent incidents of major food security breakdowns in both developed and developing countries as they have had a major impact on people's livelihoods, their commercial viability and supply of food in general.

My future job

Since I was young a dirty kitchen makes me sick. I hate it. Do the people really know how bad a dirty kitchen is? It is a time bomb full with poison. All I heard in an unclean kitchen is tic tac tic tac. I don’t know how the people that have or work in a restaurant don’t clean properly the kitchen. They have hundreds of lives in their hands! Or when they serve expire food and think “It’s not that bad” Excuse me… what?

When I choose the career that I’m studying I was thinking in the job that I’ll have in the future. I want to work checking those restaurants make them pay. Just kidding. But I really want to work in something about hygiene and health of food. Even study a major or something in that. Because I want to be an expert in this topic.

Or do research in a laboratory to improve food hygiene. Although I love being in the laboratory, I can’t stand being in a closed place for long. Although I could work a while in a laboratory, I really enjoy seeing reactions when combining compounds. But again, I do not like to be long in one place, and even more so if it is closed.

I have never found out if the work of a food inspector is well paid, but it is not something that really worries me. When there is a passion for something, and you are good at what you do, the rewards come with time.