Thermal processing and quality: Principles and overview

The food processing industry has matured over the years with an impressive record on safety and a vibrant marketplace for new product evelopment. Consumer demands for high-quality products has inspired researchers and the food industry to explore alternative methods as eplacement for traditional processing methods. The food industry is poised to adopt cost effective technologies that offer better quality and safe roducts. Given the impressive safety record associated with traditional systems, one may be tempted to conclude that there is little room for dvancement and innovation to meet current consumer demands. Process optimization will continue to evolve to enhance quality and overall nergy utilization either in traditional or novel systems. The need for efficient operations will certainly drive system automation, control and onitoring systems that can handle complex mathematical routines in real-time. Such systems would certainly require vigorous validation and erification for industry to embrace them. It truly sounds illogical for industry to re-evaluate existing process schedules based on studies that emonstrate non-linearity of survival curves. However, the need to optimize quality and operating costs could potentially prompt re-evaluating xisting systems to capture additional benefits. New processing concepts such as the application of variable retort temperature have received ttention from processing experts and promises to improve both the economy and quality of thermally processed foods. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.