Diana Salgado is a Christian food engineer working on projects to reduce food waste in the UK.
Before becoming a Christian and more specifically during my high school days, when following the steps of my entrepreneur father, I decided to study food engineering in an attempt to create my own company and become economically independent. My strong desires to leave home and buy a nice flat and a sporty car were the triggers of my life during those days. I didn’t know God had a different idea …
In the first year of my undergraduate degree, I started working in the lab with a graduate student of food technology (now called food engineering). He was attempting to add omega oils from fish to bread. But whether or not the taste panel managed to notice if the bread tasted like fish, I managed to fall in love with something I thought I was never going to like: science.
I became so involved in science and food research that I ended up meeting people who took me to study abroad, something I had never considered at the time. I ended up doing my Master’s degree in Spain where life far from my friends and family became a burden. In solitude I noticed how much I used to run from myself, my feelings and my anger. I became so frustrated with life that I ended up isolated from the people I met in Spain. That was until one day when a person called Belinda changed the route of my life by inviting me to a Christian church. Of course, I rejected the invitation the first few times. What does the church have to do with me? How is Jesus going to help me? Isn’t he dead? Belinda didn’t give up and the third time she came with an invitation I could not reject. “Come to the church on Sunday, your friend Lea (as I am calling her in this story) is coming too because we are having a party with pizza.” I frowned in surprise hearing that my Buddhist friend had accepted the invitation, but my first question was: “Is it free?” Belinda answered: “Yes” … and that’s how I stepped into a Christian church for the first time in my life. At the beginning it was a bit strange. People were acting as I had never seen before: peacefully. I started reading the Bible and it totally fitted with me, some parts I didn’t understand but people in the church were keen to teach me. I also understood how Jesus is alive!
After years of studying the Bible and hours of praying, I understood that food science was one of my ways to glorify God, not myself: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). I don’t know if in the future I’ll own my own company or not but I reached the spiritual peace that nothing except Jesus can give, the one I didn’t know I was looking for.
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