Let’s take a look at food processing & preservation and see just what’s involved with these techniques.
Food Processing is a technique used to convert raw food into eatable food (Or REAL food as we like to call it!). Let’s look at an example. Take a raw chicken and convert it into chicken nuggets – Your food processing is complete. Kids will eat nuggets easier than the pre-processed chicken – it just looks more appealing to them. So basically, food processing is used to make food more marketable and appealing. As for food preservation; one method to slow down food spoilage. The main function is to prevent the growth of bacteria, fungi and other organisms harmful for consumers.
Basically, the food processing industry uses both these methods to give us (the consumers) a nutritious, easy to store and easy to cook product. A number of methods are used to get the final preserved product e.g. drying, freezing, vacuuming etc. and some of them are discussed below:
Lowering the temperature: Refrigerating or freezing is probably the most common method used, especially at home. Food placed in refrigerators or freezers don’t get spoiled for quite some time.The cold temperature slows down bacterial action and therefore keeps your food unspoiled for longer. Freezing is even better, as the bacterial action goes down to negligible when frozen.
Dehydration: Some foods need to be dehydrated for preservation e.g. dried fruits, dried vegetables, powdered milk etc. When foods are dried, bacteria will become inactive. So, foods in air-tight containers will last a long time.
Freeze-drying: This is a special method for drying and considered much better than dehydration as this does not affect the food’s taste. This is widely used to preserve coffee and some fruits.
Salting: One of the oldest (one can call it ancient) methods for preservation of food (meats in particular) is salting it. This is because bacteria and other micro-organisms can’t survive in a salty environment. In addition, if meat is salted in cold weather, it can last for years.
Sterilization: Heat is a very good way to kill bacteria and therefore preserve food. This method is not only used for food but also in a number of hospitals to clean/sterilize the surgical instruments. People in the third world countries boil milk (and even water in some cases) to make sure that it is free of bacteria.
Vacuum Packing: This is based on removing all air around the product, therefore removing the one thing bacteria need to survive. This is done with industrial food processing equipment which extracts all the air in the packaging around the food, using a vacuum packer machine. Food is first heated to kill the bacteria and then sealed. Canning was the original method used, but nowadays plastic packaging is just as common.
The use of food processing machinery in itself is not necessarily bad : The key factor to look at when making your food choices, is how the food has been processed and preserved, and what – if any – chemicals have been added to it.
Author : John Tyrell. Want to find out more about modern food processing machinery, then visit windsor food machinery.
