Lauren studied BSc Nutrition, graduating in 2023. She is now a Technical Assistant on a graduate scheme at AMFresh. In this blog, she tells us what she enjoyed about her course at Leeds Beckett and how it helped her achieve her amazing career in health.

Course: BSc (Hons) Nutrition

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you've been doing since you graduated.

I studied Nutrition during my time at Leeds Beckett with a placement year, graduating in July 2023. I'm passionate about the science of health and nutrition because I know that the fundamentals of any nutrition advice come from the science behind this.

Tell us a bit more about your current role and why it's amazing.

My current role is a Technical Assistant on a management graduate scheme for a large fruit packing company called AMFresh. Within my role, I oversee all internal specifications for the retailers, ensuring that the fruit is the correct specifications as per the retailer requirements.

I organise routine taste panels where we try all UK retailers' citrus products and rate them based on a few topics. I aid in all technical admin and organisational tasks as well as assisting on grapes as well when required.

I enjoy it, because although it's not the traditional route to take after the course - where most go into healthcare - I still have a heavy focus on nutrition and use my degree most days to assist in tasks.

I help people in the terms of supplying the nation with a great range of fruit and keeping the standards high within the quality of fruit.

How did your course at Leeds Beckett help you get to where you are today?

My course helped me to look at food and beverage industries and using LinkedIn to find those companies and subsequent graduate schemes.

We had a module about nutritional biochemistry which I loved and found very interesting. It inspired me to continue down that path where I'm now closely associated with the innovation department and quality of fruit.

It's a huge industry that's very intricate, but on the face of it, it seems simple, so I enjoy the depth that there is. I found my graduate scheme myself, using the skills I had gained from the professional development modules we completed.

What support or opportunities did you receive at Leeds Beckett that have helped shaped your career?

I was able to complete three summer placements after my second year where I was involved in community nutrition, sports nutrition and finally disease prevention nutrition. The latter carried on for nine months as a placement year.

It was highly interesting to gain exposure and look at different areas of nutrition to decide what I knew I wouldn't do again and what I could explore. Within my longer placement, I was able to shadow lots of different contracts within the NHS and see the different ways of working and approaches they took. I gained a lot of insight from that.

These experiences have helped me professionally and the professional development module we did for two years on the course was helpful in knowing how to clearly reflect and be able to see what my goals and aspirations were and where I wanted to be going forward.

Can you tell us about a project, piece of work or experience from university that you're proud of?

I'm most proud of our final year project as part of the Competent Professional module, which was a business case for Leeds City Council about tackling childhood obesity in a deprived area of Leeds. This was a group project where we had to decide on many factors and were mostly independent with it, concluding with a business case and a presentation.

I was proud of this work because we'd taken lots of time to think about our choices and the impacts these factors would have, doing things such as a SWOT analysis and seeing what is best for the area.

The concept was well thought out and the presentation went very well and gave a new perspective to an old idea.

What would you say to someone considering studying your course?

I would say be ready for the hard work but enjoy it. Use as many contacts and sources as you have available - all my lecturers at the time were very knowledgeable and had many years of experience within the sector.

What's next for you?

Next for me, is finding out my second placement for the two-year graduate scheme and settling into that role. I hope to be in a senior position by the end of the two years, within the food and beverage industry.