Food Preservation CBE658

Heating: Eggs, meat, vegetables, potatoes, cereal grains (rice, oats, wheat), and pasta

Why do the use of heat is common in the industry?

Themal processing technique is been widely use in food industry. The basic purpose of thermal processing is to reduce and destroy microbial activity, the reduce enzym, and to produce physical and chemical changes.

There are three step for thermal processing which is BLANCHING, PASTEURIZATION and STERILIZATION.

The reason why heat is commonly used in food industry is because the thermal technique have many benefit include inactivation of food-borne pathogens, natural toxins or other detrimental constituents, prolongation of shelf-life, improved digestibility and bioavailability of nutrients, improved palatability, taste, texture and flavour and enhanced functional properties, including augmented antioxidants and other defense reactivity or increased antimicrobial effectiveness. However, using heat can bring some unintentional undesired consequences, such as losses of certain nutrients, formation of toxic compounds (acrylamide, furan or acrolein), or of compounds with negative effects on flavour perception, texture or colour. 

The best traditional chemical preservation is sugar. Why sugar? Because sugar is being widely use in preservation from past, present and the future. Sugar is good chemical preservative because it helps prevent microbial growth and can easily be prepare. Some of organic source of sugar are sugarcane, honey and others. From sugar, fresh fruits are being preserved in sugar syrup and made it into jams. The other top traditional preservatives is salt and vinegar.

Meanwhile, in modern chemical preservation, the best food preservation is method is sodium and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter, have been used for preserving and curing meat for centuries, and are still used today. Bacteria reducenitrates (NO3-) tonitrites(NO2-) and then to nitric oxide (NO), which destroys the enzyme ferredoxin, used by some bacteria to obtain their energy, for exampleClostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism. For this reason, nitrates or nitrites are considered essential in cured meat products. This form of chemical food preservation is, however, controversial; nitrites can react with chemicals in the meat to form nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic. Nitrates and nitrites are not effective against microorganisms which do not use ferredoxin — for example Salmonella.

In my opinion, food Preservatives, the chemical agent that extend the storage life of food is being used for a long period of time. Preservatives are important in food industry. However, to make sure Preservatives are safe for use, it should be within the pH range and not occur of the flavours.

Chemical preservatives are important because it also can serve as antioxidant, stabiliser, firming agent and retainers. In our daily life, we also use traditional chemical preservative such as salt and sugar.

In my opinion, food deterioration happened because of a few factor such as affects of mechanical, pyshical, chemical and microbial. All this effect have different action in spoiling food and they have their major quality loss mechanism.

Based on the video topic 1, I learned that food preservation is a method of monitoring food at desired level of properties or in the easy explaination means that to maintain food maximun benefit. Additional information, the reason for food preservation is to reduce food waste and increase their shelf life.

Sharing my experience, there are a lot of food preservation technique that came across in my daily life. The technique that i always did was using the refrigerator. Everytime i went the supermarket shopping for food, I am using all the three part of the refrigerator to preserve my food. The top one was for the fish, meats and so on by using freezing techique. Meanwhile, the middle one is for cool drying food and the bottom part I use the cool temperature storage technique for food such as fruits and vegetables to maintain their nutrient and so on. The other preservation technique that i used to see was, salting, drying, canning, vacumn and many more.

As you can see the *picture attached, that is some information for everyone on how food was being preserved from food processer to consumer. You can click the link below if you interested to know more about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er40pFr6AZQ