{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Startup CPG Podcast","title":"R&D Radio: Food Microstructure, Ultra-Processed Foods, and the Contract Manufacturer Formula Trap with Abbey Thiel ","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1763,"description":"In this episode of R&D Radio, hosted by food scientist Adam Yee, Adam sits down with Abbey Thiel, a food scientist, science communicator, and consultant with a PhD in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and postdoctoral training at Wageningen University. Abbey specializes in food formulation, ingredient functionality, and technical problem solving for food and beverage brands — with deep expertise in confections and frozen desserts. She is also the creator of the YouTube channel Abby the Food Scientist, a six-year-old channel with over 150,000 subscribers, and the author of multiple books including a food science careers textbook and a candy science coloring book for kids.Abbey started her channel during her PhD as a creative outlet — and what began as procrastinating on her dissertation became one of the most recognizable food science education platforms on the internet. Along the way, the channel turned into an unexpected client pipeline, with founders reaching out after finding her ingredient explainer videos at the exact moment something was going wrong with their product.Adam and Abbey get into all of it — from the fascinating science of sponge candy and why gelatin will quietly sabotage your foam if you boil it, to the real reason ultra-processed foods make us overeat (hint: it is not the ingredient list, it is the microstructure), to the contract manufacturing trap that quietly kills small brands when founders realize too late they do not own their own formula.Listen in as they cover:Why you should bring a food scientist in before the catastrophe, not after it The microstructure of sponge candy — what foam actually looks like under a microscope and why every step in the process either protects or destroys it How Abbey diagnosed a failing candy product just by watching a video of the process Why gelatin must never be boiled — and what happens to it when you do The real science behind ultra-processed foods: why food microstructure and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/pMuUaMpWaAi3tfCEgC2OkLBVzokuLjLsIzwDIbGFqi4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hMTFl/MTgxNTNlZTAwZjU1/ZmNmNWM1ZjkwMDg5/NTU4MS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}