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Food Science: Plan your Search

This guide provides an overview of key resources available for Food Science, and some strategies to effectively find high quality information.

Why plan your search?

 

At university you are expected to find and use scholarly information:

  • in your assignments
  • to prepare for class
  • to explore new theories and ideas

To effectively find scholarly information, you need to use specific search strategies. 

Use this page to learn how to plan your search and find the best scholarly information sources to use. 

Step 1: Identify your key concepts

 

Before you find any information, identify the main ideas (or key concepts) in your assignment question or research topic

The following video shows you how to break down your assessment and to get started brainstorming keywords you can use.

Here is an example:

Investigate taste and textural value of food carbohydrates in vegan meat.

The key concepts are: 

Taste & Texture Food Carbohydrates Vegan Meat

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords & synonyms

 

Different words can be used to describe the same concept.

Think of other words that could be used to describe your key concepts. Synonyms should also be included. 

We recommend brainstorming your keywords in a table like the one shown below.

Example:

Taste & Texture Food Carbohydrates Vegan Meat

Flavour

Consistency

Gums

Fiber

Starch

plant based meat analogues

PMA

meat replacements

artificial meat

lightening bolt

Tips

Some resources to help with brainstorming: 

  • Google & Wikipedia
  • Dictionaries & Thesauri
  • Reference books & Encyclopedias
  • Microsoft Co-Pilot

Step 3: Build your search

 

Boolean Operators are a way of telling a database or search engine how to do your search. Watch the video to learn how.

Use Boolean Operators to combine your keywords & synonyms into a search. You can build multiple searches using different synonyms & keywords.

Example: 

Use OR to combine synonyms & similar words:

Key Concept Keywords & Synonyms Search
Food Carbohydrates

Gums

Starch

Fiber

(Gums OR
Starch OR
Fiber)

Use AND to combine your key concepts together, use quotation mark "" to search a phrase consists of 2 and more words (e.g, "degradable plastic"): 

(taste OR texture OR flavor OR consistency) AND ("food carbohydrates" OR gums OR starch OR fiber) AND ("plant-based meat" OR "vegan meat" OR "meat replacement" OR "artificial meat")

Step 4: Start searching

 

You will need to find different types of information during your studies. These may include: 

  • Books & book chapters
  • Journal articles
  • Newspaper articles
  • Standards & statistics
  • Reports
  • Grey literature

The type of information you are looking for will determine where you search, and how you search. 

Using the steps above will help you find most of these information types, but there are also other places to look depending on if you are looking specifically for books, journal articles, standards or reports.

Step 5: Review your results

 

Not all the information you get from a search will be useful. Successful searches will show results relevant to your topic. If your results are not relevant go back and try different keywords in your search.

Find relevant results by checking the: 

Even if your information is relevant, it might not be good quality. Check if it passes the C.R.A.P. Test before you use it. 

Resources