Do you feel appreciated as a Food Technologist?

This is in response to a comment left about an earlier post (thanks for the feedback!).

here in the US the industry does NOT appreciate the value of a food scientist. The marketers demand what they want and will not hear otherwise.

As an ex food tech myself I'm interested to see what others in the industry think about the role of the food scientist and if regionally the view changes. Send a comment on this or if you want to submit a post send that and if we get a few good ones with differing views I'll put them on the site and credit (if you want) the author of course.