Careers: Making a difference to people (V0330)
Here, John Monro from Crop & Food Research (now called Plant & Food Research) explains how his research career in food science began and what he likes best about it.
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John Monro is excited about his work on carbohydrates, so much so, that he has developed his own system for measuring the impact of carbohydrate-containing foods on blood sugar, but the thing he likes best is that his research will help people.
Transcript
John Monro (Plant & Food Research): I started off at university – well, I was going to go to medical school, but I drank too much beer and played too much football and I didn’t do very well in my first year. But I did well after that, but I changed direction, and I did biochemistry and botany.
I started off working with cows and then I moved to the other end, to the colon. Then I branched out into digestible carbohydrates and I started working on glycaemic responses. And I found that when I went to use the glycaemic index, it wasn’t a very user-friendly system, so I developed another system, and it’s just taken off from there really.
The most exciting thing for me about this work is I can see it making a difference to people. And I think something that you want to do when you’ve got a job is to feel that what you are doing is meaningful.
Metadata
- Published:
- 19 November 2007
- Copyright:
- The University of Waikato
