Holidays have come to an end, but its time for me to start a shiny new rotation!!! This time I'm in my external management rotation (so, still kind of foodservice related :( But it's only 4 weeks, and then it's all clinical for as far as the eye can see!!!)
I'm now at a large food corporation (hmm... not sure if I'm permitted to say which one...) that produces several kinds of convenience foods, such as breakfast cereals, snack bars, pastry products, and others. There are only a few dietitians who work here full-time, but a few others who are here on contract/temporary positions as well. The contract/temp dietitians are working mostly with the regulatory department, which determines what kinds of claims Health Canada will allow companies to make on their packaging, and whether our products meet those requirements. The full-time people work mostly with the health and nutrition department, where they advocate to the R&D and marketing teams to develop and promote the manufacture of products that will promote health, based both on nutrition evidence and an understanding of the marketplace. The company's products become more reputable, because a regulated health professional is somewhere behind it. The dietitians also network with other health professionals (including other dietitians, pharmacists, nurses, etc) to promote the health qualities of the products and encourage them to recommend certain products to their clients/patients when appropriate. This networking also helps the company to gauge how they are perceived by health professionals (e.g. do other dietitians think that we've "sold out" and are only here to make money? Do they understand the role of advocacy in the company to influence what kinds of products are made?)
My project for this month is to do a competitive analysis of the "grain snacks" category (things like granola bars, marshmallow/rice squares, and protein bars). I'm working with three other interns to figure out where our company stands against the major and smaller competitive brands in grocery stores. The marketing people gave us a huge list of all of the "snack" products out there that was pulled from some database, and now we interns have the task of gathering in-depth data on each of them. We've been hunting around grocery stores to find the nutritional info, ingredients lists, what kinds of health claims are being made (such as "this product contains soluble fibre, which helps to lower cholesterol"), if they are peanut free/gluten free/organic/other specialty things, etc. We will then take all that data and create a massive report comparing where our company's products stack up nutritionally against the others - e.g. are we way higher in sodium than others? This information can be used by the marketing and R&D people to figure out market trends, and potentially contribute to development of new products or reformulations of existing products to meet those trends.
For me this project isn't all that exciting, simply because I've done this a thousand times before. Having already completed a business and marketing degree, and worked in sales, marketing and communications for several years before transitioning to a career in nutrition, I've done competitive analyses countless times before. I can do a SWOT analysis with my hands tied behind my back. But, because of my background and understanding of business processes, I've somehow been elected the leader of this project because the other interns are straight-up nutrition and science people who have never fathomed anything like this before. Using an Excel spreadsheet for data analysis is a completely new experience for some. So, it's not all bad - even though I don't anticipate that I'm going to be learning much about marketing or food industry above what I already know, at least I will have a great opportunity for leadership skills development through this.
I've also figured out that working in industry is absolutely not the job for me. Nothing against the dietitians who choose this area, really, but it's just not for me. I've experienced the business world before and knew then that it wasn't the place for me. I wanted to become a dietitian because I wanted to work with patients in a healthcare environment, not in a cubicle working on marketing projects for food products or on R&D for new convenience products. Other interns have had an awesome experience at their industry placements, so I absolutely wouldn't call this a waste of time or discourage people from taking the experience - some people who thought they would never enjoy industry ended up loving it!
We're wrapping up here this week, and soon the day I've been waiting for all this time will come ---- CLINICAL ROTATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 *SQUEAL!*
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