Why Don't We Eat Oysters for Breakfast? Where Food Science Meets Sociology
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Presented By
Presented by the Lyceum Society
Speaker: Alina Szczesniak, General Foods
While earning her graduate degree in Food Technology at MIT, Alina became fascinated by food habits. Known internationally as the "Mother of Food Texture," she combines in this talk her vast knowledge both of food texture and food habits. The answer to, "Why don't we eat oysters for breakfast?" will be hidden in her presentation. A witty speaker, she promises that the first person with the answer will earn a prize. So listen well.
Alina Surmacka Szczesniak (pronounced Sh-Chesnyak) was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. In August 1944 during the W.W. II uprising of the city of Warsaw, she was deported to Germany with her mother and spent 10 months in a slave labor camp. Liberated by the American Army on April 13,1945, she came to New York exactly a year later on April 13,1946 to join her uncle, inventor of the Polish system of making synthetic rubber. He and Marie Sklodowska Curie, winner of two Nobels, were her role models in shaping her interests in science. Alina was graduated from Bryn Mawr College 1948, magna cum laude, with honors in chemistry, receiving her Doctor of Science degree In 1952 from MIT, Dept. of Food Technology The same year she joined the research department of General Foods (presently, Kraft Foods) as Associate Chemist and moved up both scientific and managerial ladders to the rank of Principal Scientist.