Prior to joining Nutricia, I’d completed a degree in Biomedical Sciences and then completed a placement year at Mondelez International, looking into product development with regard to chocolate. It was fascinating, and opened my eyes to the world of food - but I always felt I wanted my work to be more health-focused. So when a Nutricia graduate role became available, I thought that combined the two worlds perfectly: yummy food and promoting health. 

Nutricia’s philosophy really spoke to me. I admired the fact that their business is built on the idea of doing the right thing and having a positive impact, which can sometimes be quite hard to find in an employer. As a company, I could really see they were committed to health through food, and my background in biomedical sciences made medical-focused nutrition very interesting - not just in terms of how nutrition is important to a healthy lifestyle, but how people with certain diseases or who are malnourished can be supported through food alongside medicine.  

My role as a Senior Nutrition Manager mainly involves working on our consumer portfolio - brands like Activia, GetPRO and Actimel - and making sure that our products are as strong as they can possibly be from a nutritional perspective, while also working with our global and local teams on innovation. We look at any products that we are planning to launch to make sure they are healthy in terms of being low in fat, salt and sugar, as well as providing extra benefits such as essential vitamins and minerals, probiotics, fibre and protein to a name a few. From Nutricia’s perspective, that means having a really good understanding of how certain nutrients e.g. fibre or protein can help with conditions such as malnutrition. It’s so interesting to see and be part of how science is applied to our portfolio, helping both consumers in their day to day lives, as well as our patients who require nutritional products to help with specific conditions. 

As a bit of a science nerd, my favourite part of the job is the amount of research we do about what goes into our products. The amount of work that takes place behind the scenes before a final product is produced is staggering, both on the healthcare and consumer sides of our business. What I particularly enjoy is that you can get really deep into all of the science, and I love being part of that process of innovation. It’s incredibly rewarding to be involved in trying to change the way that Nutricia - and, in fact, the entire industry - will do things in the future of nutrition. It feels pioneering!

What’s challenging about that process is future-proofing ourselves, and really trying to ensure that doing so is always at the forefront of our minds. We always have to push ourselves to think several steps ahead and anticipate what the future looks like.

As an employer, Nutricia has been incredibly helpful in facilitating my pursuit of further education through flexible working - for example by allowing work from home so that I can devote hours I would have otherwise spent commuting to working on my dissertation instead. My dissertation is a survey of UK dietitians, looking at how much they reuse tube feeding plastics - and this is really connected to what we do as a business. I have had a lot of support from Nutricia because we are so committed as a company to the sustainability of tube feeding. Essentially, working for Nutricia has halved my research time, because I can call someone and talk to them about it, rather than having to go away and read several books about the subject. I’m directly plugged into a network of expertise - encompassing our own internal nutritional experts along with external healthcare professionals and dietitians - and that has really been incredibly helpful.

Nutricia’s focus on sustainability has led to a lot of work going into examining and testing tube feeding processes to see if it’s possible to reuse the single use plastic that goes hand in hand with tube feeding, especially in patients own homes. As a result, we have discovered that some of this plastic equipment can be safely reused over the course of a 24 hour period when handled properly - so they don’t need to be discarded each time a feed has been completed. What we didn’t know, however, is the extent to which people are aware of this research, or how often people have actually been reusing the equipment. That’s where I came in with my master’s degree, and why my dissertation is a survey based on establishing how well people understand that tube feeding plastics can be reused, and what we as a company could do to help support them in terms of education and instruction. Our patients care about the environment just as much as we do, so we’re really keen to support them where possible to help them make tube feeding more sustainable.

The most rewarding part of the work is seeing the difference that our products make to people’s lives - especially on the Nutricia side of the business. When I worked in the preterm category, you would often hear about tiny preterm babies who had survived thanks to one of Nutricia’s products, and that was just absolutely wonderful. Hearing stories of how we’ve helped any of our patients is always endlessly inspiring, and it continually reminds me why I love my role and my commitment to this work.