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Jordan Powers: 0:15

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:27

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:34

We are here with Kaitlyn Casulli, assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and UGA Cooperative Extension process specialist. Kaitlyn, thanks for coming by today.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 0:44

Absolutely, happy to be here.

Jordan Powers: 0:45

As we get started. What is your story? How did you get to where you are today? And how did you join UGA?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 0:51

I found out about food science when I was in high school. So, I participated in Science Olympiad, and they had an event called Food Science. And I thought, "Hey, you know food, science, I like both of those. Let's give it a try." And ended up doing really well. So kept pursuing it and studying it in high school. And then when I was getting ready to go to college, I was between meteorology and food science. And meteorology was always an interest of mine. Again, Science Olympiad getting into that interest. But food science, to me, was much more interesting in terms of being able to see what you do on the shelf and how it impacts people every day. I was initially interested in doing engineering, you know, maybe protein chemistry, engineering, things like that, but I got into a food engineering lab, which was more focused on heat and mass transfer and processing techniques. I really just thrived in that environment. So I decided when I wanted to go to grad school, instead of doing food science, I wanted to go more into engineering. And so with that, I decided to pursue graduate school at Michigan State University. I was able to work with processing, specifically with pistachios and peanuts. For my PhD, I did the peanuts, and that really led me to the job at UGA. So when I was in graduate school, I was doing a lot of networking. I met some faculty members at UGA, and it turned out that they had a position that they were opening up right as I was finishing at Michigan State. So I was able to really kind of transition right away from graduate school into my faculty position here at UGA, and I've been here now for two and a half years.

Emily Cabrera: 2:23

So that is really fascinating. And you mentioned that you work with heating and cooling. Is that part of your processing process?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 2:31

Absolutely. So, part of what I do as an Extension specialist is helping companies all around Georgia. And as much as I like to think about non-thermal processing and not applying heat to foods to make them microbially safe, I realize that heating is really inherently a part of food processing as a whole. So a majority of our foods still get heated to achieve a food safety outcome. So having that knowledge of the heat transfer helps me integrate it with the microbial inactivation to help lower the risk of people getting sick.

Emily Cabrera: 3:03

Does that impact nutritional value?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 3:05

It can. Sometimes you can get reduction in things like antioxidants or other beneficial compounds in foods. We're trying to steer people away from heating. But again, this non-thermal processing is very expensive. It's equipment intensive, so a lot of people, especially smaller processors, don't have the tools that they need to be able to purchase that equipment and then validate it for the food safety outcome. So it's still very up and coming area for a lot of processors.

Jordan Powers: 3:30

So it's definitely something where I'm hearing all of these words of thermal and transfer and all of these things I frequently tell our scientists, "Talk to me like you're talking to your aunt at Thanksgiving."

Kaitlyn Casulli: 3:40

Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Powers: 3:40

Really break this down. But it sounds like it's really a balance of making sure the nutrition stays as high as it can while keeping the consumer safe.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 3:49

Absolutely. Yeah. So we have what's called kinetics. So kinetics are just a way of describing the rate of how things degrade over time during a process. We have microbial kinetics and we have chemical kinetics. Microbial kinetics, obviously, we want them to go down to a certain level where we can say the risk is low enough so someone could eat this and not get sick. But we also want to balance that with the chemical kinetics, because those chemical compounds are also going down with the microbial compounds. So how do we really balance those two things and find the ideal process for getting these to be microbial-safe and chemically-nutritive for people? It's playing that balance game, and one of the ways that we can do this is with rapid heating. So instead of a very slow heating process where it's taking a really long time, you're getting more of that microbial kinetic destruction, but you're also getting a lot, lot more. So think of a canned food. Looks kind of gross, the color's kind of bad, doesn't taste really great, versus a fresh, cooked green bean or something like that. Tastes a lot better, color's better, nutrient retention is better. So how do we optimize that process to get safe, quality food?

Jordan Powers: 4:55

That is fascinating. And I know that I am a broken record, but it never ceases to amaze me how much being in this environment changes the way that you think about food. I mean, green beans are the perfect example. My mom always bought frozen because the canned green beans just make you kind of sad.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 5:09

Yep, yep.

Jordan Powers: 5:10

But, never really thinking that there are scientists behind that. Making those things happen, which is just incredible. And one of the things you just touched on was helping those producers, and especially those smaller producers across the state. We know that you are involved with the newly launched Value-addition Institute for Business Expansion, or VIBE. What is this initiative and how will it benefit growers in Georgia?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 5:31

VIBE is our effort of bringing farmers into value added markets. So instead of selling their produce as fresh, how can they convert that into a food product that's preserved and can be on the shelf for sale for consumers? We see that value-added production is as much capital and labor intensive it can be sometimes, it's much, much more profitable than just fresh sale. The other advantage is you can use product that wouldn't be intended for fresh sale and make that into a value-added process. So think about a pickle, a cucumber that might not be pretty enough, maybe it has bad coloring, or it's shaped in a way that people don't want to buy off the store shelf. You can chop it up, make it into relish, and then you can sell that as relish at much, much higher price than it would be as a cucumber. So really helping these processors navigate, what can they use? How can they use it? Helping them with the product and process development part of it, and then really linking them up with other Georgia resources to fill in the gaps where we don't know what we're doing, quite frankly. So I am not an expert on writing a business plan, so I'm going to send them to somebody who knows how to write business plans. I don't know anything about finances. I'm not going to claim to do anyone's finances. So we have people that can help farmers with that aspect of it as well. So really creating those opportunities for them to think about going into value-added processing and then bringing in every piece that we have in Georgia to support that effort.

Emily Cabrera: 6:54

It sounds like there's a lot of room for increasing your own collaboration across campus. And we also know that FoodPIC, the Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center, is down in Griffin, and we can link in the show notes to FoodPIC. Do you work with faculty and staff in FoodPIC in connecting growers down there?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 7:14

So we're really in the beginning stages of the VIBE grant, but we eventually see that if processors have product that they want to make and they really want to scale up very quickly, then that would be something that FoodPIC would handle for them. FoodPIC has a lot of capabilities. They can do canned foods. They can do fluid foods, going through aseptic processing, which is again, high heat, but very quickly heating up, so you retain the quality a little bit better than just regular pasteurization process, where it's heating a little bit slower. So they really have the hands on ability to bring in some of these advanced technologies and the greater processing capacity for smaller processors looking to take that next step.

Jordan Powers: 7:52

That is incredible. And we did an episode with Kevin Mis Solval, who is part of FoodPIC, as well as the VIBE initiative. So we will be sure to link to that episode in the show notes, because he talks a lot about that value-add and revolutionizing food products, which is, it's just fascinating and an amazing opportunity for Georgia's growers to increase their revenue and kind of diversify what they're able to offer, and then at the end of the day for consumers, change up what we get to see on store shelves, which is really exciting.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 8:17

I'll also throw out there that Dr. Carla Schwan, which you mentioned she did another interview. She's also part of the VIBE grant. She's going to help us out a lot with connecting with the FACS side of things.

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Jordan Powers: 8:29

When Kaitlyn says the "FACS side of things," she's referring to the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences, or FACS. FACS promotes wellbeing through science-based programs in financial planning, housing and consumer economics, human development and family science, nutritional sciences and more. Many faculty within FACS also have appointments within UGA Cooperative Extension to provide training, disseminate research-based publications and link individuals, families, businesses and communities in Georgia to university faculty and resources. We'll add a link in the show notes.

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Kaitlyn Casulli: 9:04

Where people are producing at home, and maybe they want to take that home based product or cottage food and move it into manufactured foods and look into program assessment and things like that for VIBE, so, another valuable part of our team.

Jordan Powers: 9:16

Absolutely, look at us go. We've got the whole VIBE inititative right here on the podcast. I love it.

Emily Cabrera: 9:23

You mentioned processors, and it occurred to me that a lot of times when we talk about, like food to table, or we talk about some product being grown in the field, we kind of jump straight to the consumer. But you've mentioned processors. There's that middle ground. There's that middle person that takes that raw material, does something with it, and really takes a lot of input from the growers and from the consumers to make it something. Can you talk a little bit about your collaboration with processors as well?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 9:51

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you've just defined food science right there. It's the science of taking the things that we grow and getting them into a form that the consumers want, and a lot of times, processing is a lot of little steps along the way. So you might have say, wheat coming in from the field, someone turns it into flour, someone purchases that flour, makes it into bread, and then maybe someone buys that bread and makes sandwiches for a retail outlet, or something like that. So processors come in all shapes and sizes, all steps along the supply chain, but a lot of the work that I've done with processors has been thinking about their processing techniques. So the thermal process, someone gets in a bunch of produce they want to make salsa or barbecue sauce, how long and how hot do they need to heat that up to get it to be shelf stable? You know, not only in terms of does it look good and taste good, but is it safe for consumption?

Emily Cabrera: 10:42

Well, switching from your research program in food science to your Extension efforts in beverages, we know that you also focus on brewing science. How does this tie into your overall Extension program?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 10:54

I travel a lot around the state, and one of the things that I like to do when I'm traveling around is see what breweries are around in the area. Especially in rural Georgia, there are not a lot of breweries around. Surprisingly, some areas that I think might have a brewery, don't. So I really want to try and push this craft beverage industry. Not only brewing, but, you know, winemaking, kombucha, mead, coffee, whatever it is, help processors get into those businesses, because craft beverages are booming. I think brewing is kind of a little bit on the flat line, and we've seen a lot of breweries close recently, but there's still people out there that want to start breweries. So I host a workshop each year specifically targeting these people that want to start a brewery, and we bring them in for three days, and we have classroom sessions, you know, panel discussions about taproom culture, how to select and scale your equipment, how to design your brew house. Really kind of all the step by step stuff you need, not so much on the brewing science, more on designing and running your brewing operation. And then in the evenings, we rent out some vans and we drive people around and we offer them brewery tours. So it's really just a lot of fun.

Emily Cabrera: 12:03

That is so much fun!

Kaitlyn Casulli: 12:04

Last year it was, it was just really cool last year. We start out the day and everybody's really quiet and they don't want to talk to each other, but by the time the van's going back to the hotel, it's a party in there. Everybody's really bustling and networking and enjoying each other's company. It was just really rewarding to see all that. And you know, help grow the brewing network here in Georgia.

Jordan Powers: 12:24

That's incredible. Changing tunes a little bit, earlier this year, during the double cicada emergence, which I don't think any of us will soon forget, you wrote a blog post on how to harvest, store and prepare cicadas for eating. Which I have to say, I was fascinated by the emergence, not so much with the consumption. We will link to that blog post in the show notes, but tell us how you got interested in edible insects.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 12:47

The last cicada emergence, it was either in 2020 or 2021, and I was in Michigan at the time and driving down to visit my parents in North Carolina, and I went through West Virginia, and I camped overnight. I just remembered the next morning walking out and seeing all these cicadas everywhere. It was just like the most unreal thing I've ever seen. I think at that point, I had heard of the idea of eating insects and the cicada emergence that was forthcoming at the time. And one of my advisors, Don Schaffner, at Rutgers University, had a student from Princeton High School in his lab over the summer, and he was doing things with edible insects as well. So I was like, "Oh, this is really cool. Let's collaborate. Let's talk about this." I never really got the research program off the ground that I wanted to do, you know, more science around the food safety aspects of edible insects, but I thought that this double emergence seemed like the perfect opportunity to spread some of the knowledge, some of the literature review and some of the experiments that this high school student had done, now an undergrad at Cornell, just to spread that knowledge to Georgia and really kind of catch people's eye and make them think about protein in a different way. Insects contain a lot of great protein, and the cicadas were all over the place. So it's almost like getting a free steak, but maybe not quite, depending on how you think about it.

Jordan Powers: 14:05

[laughter] Okay, so have you eaten cicadas?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 14:08

I have not eaten cicadas, but I did eat a cricket granola bar one time. Once you get past why it's so crunchy, it's it's not so bad, like the flavor is okay. I think that a lot of research and development still needs to go into how can we use these insects? You know, maybe it's not grinding them up and putting them directly in the granola bar. Maybe it's extracting the protein and then using that protein to develop new products.

Jordan Powers: 14:32

That makes sense. I have also had a cricket protein bar. I've also consumed an ant lemon pound cake, which shameless plug for Insectival, we can link to that in the show notes, but some of our experts are at that amazing annual event and the Botanical Garden, and there's an array of different insect snacks you can try. And I have to say, if I didn't look down and see the ants, I would think I was eating a lemon poppy seed something. And then you look down and there's legs, and you have to look away quickly. But it's a lot of fun.

Emily Cabrera: 14:58

So is there such a thing as a typical day for you, and what does that look like?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 15:03

First of all, no [laughter]. A lot of things that I do on a day-to-day basis are these process approvals, where I was talking about helping the processor figure out how long and how hot, and then issuing a letter to them, describing their process and helping them understand which regulations they have to comply with. Food processing in general, is a lot of regulations. That's a lot of what I deal with. But another day could look like sitting at my desk writing a manuscript, writing a proposal, kind of the boring stuff, but really what I love is going out and meeting people. Being in the industry. You know, last week, I went out and met with a farmer down in LaGrange area, and that was just a lot of fun, you know, going to see his property, see the facility that he wants to use for producing food, and just making that personal connection and having a conversation.

Jordan Powers: 15:49

It all just goes back to being such an incredible resource for the growers and the processors in the state. We also know that you're involved in the Flavor of Georgia food product competition. We did a wonderful episode with Laurel Dunn on that, so we will link to that in the show notes as well. So I think it was fascinating to hear that your interest in food science kicked off in high school. I don't think many people can say that they're doing what they wanted to do when they were a kid, but here you are doing it. So for those people who may be in high school or may be even in undergrad, saying, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Why should somebody study food science and technology?

Kaitlyn Casulli: 16:22

Kind of the reason I got into it is it's very hands on. You get to see what you're doing. So my journey in food science started out in a food micro lab where I was doing, like, a lot of DNA extraction and stuff like that. It just really did not spark my interest because I couldn't see DNA, you know, you can't see what's going on, so you really don't know whether it's successful or not. But if you're making a food product, if you're making it on a large scale, and you're processing it, you can see what it looks like going in, and then you see what it looks like coming out. And that, to me, is just very rewarding and a cool thing to see. I'll also say, you know, try a bunch of things. Find out where maybe your interest would lie, but the food industry is a great place to be, no matter what you do, if you want to go into chemistry, processing, microbiology, or even sales, marketing, communications, all of these things come together to make the food industry. So no matter what your interest is, you can find a place in the food industry.

Emily Cabrera: 17:17

Yeah, it's something that touches all of our lives every day, all day.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 17:20

Yeah. And you can't just make a good food product and expect it to be successful. You have to have someone marketing it. You have to have someone creating the ads and the commercials to push it out there into the world. So yes, it's just endless opportunity.

Jordan Powers: 17:33

That's inspiring. Well, Kaitlyn, thank you for taking the time to come in today. We know that your days vary immensely, whether you're in the office, in the lab, out with a grower or a processor, but we appreciate you carving a little bit of time out to come on the podcast today. So thanks so much.

Kaitlyn Casulli: 17:48

It was a pleasure to be here. I'm happy to share my experiences, and just glad to be in food science and have the opportunity to do the things that I always wanted to do.

Jordan Powers: 17:58

It's inspiring for sure.

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Jordan Powers: 18:00

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.