Kinetic Modeling of Food Quality: A Critical Review

This article discusses the possibilities to study relevant quality aspects of food, such as color, nutrient content, and safety, in a quantitative way via mathematical models. These quality parameters are governed by chemical, biochemical, microbial, and physical changes. It is argued that the modeling of such quality aspects is in fact kinetic modeling. Therefore, attention is paid to chemical kinetics, and its possibilities and limitations are discussed when applied to changes occurring in foods. The discussion is illustrated with examples from the literature. A major difficulty is that principles from chemical kinetics are strictly speaking only valid for simple elementary reactions, and foods are all but simple. Interactions in the food matrix and variability are 2 complicating factors. It is discussed how this difficulty can be tackled, and research priorities are suggested to come to better models in food science, and thereby to a better control of food quality.