Modern Food Preservation Techniques

Food preservation has been around for hundreds to thousands of years now. People normally apply practical and simple food preservation techniques to prolong lifespan of foods. Common techniques of freezing, drying, canning, and pickling are effective food preservation processes that are used by many households. Commercial food preservation uses the same techniques, but there are specific technologies used. Massive preservation of food also involves many machines and systematic processes. Through the years, modern technology has successfully produced some sophisticated and new techniques for food processing. The basic idea is to prolong shelf-life and good edible quality of perishable goods like fruits, vegetables, and meat. Some of these new technologies include UHT, food irradiation, and modified atmosphere packaging. UHT stands for ultra high treatment processing of food. It usually involves rapid and intense heating of food to a temperature of as high as 140øC. At this temperature, bacteria is basically killed. The same temperature is kept for even a few seconds before cooling down rapidly. The processed food is then immediately stored in sterilized and airtight containers for prevention of recontamination. UHT food preservation is commonly applied to milk products and fruit juices. One disadvantage of the technique is that vitamin C and other heat-sensitive vitamins and nutrients are destroyed. In most UHT products, especially fruit juices, artificial vitamins are added after treatment. Food irradiation is a sterilizing process wherein food is bombarded by gamma rays, high-energy rays that facilitate fast-moving electrons that effectively kill bacteria, fungi, and other organisms like insects. In certain cases, the process is used to delay ripening of fruit. A major advantage of this technique is that it could be applied after packaging and sealing of food. Aside from prolonging shelf life, food irradiation is effective in maintaining high quality before treatment. As for the disadvantage, insects and microorganisms are killed, but other possible contaminants like toxins, carcasses, and feces may remain. Lastly, modified atmosphere packaging involves applying mixture of gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide so that food storage is improved. The food storage atmosphere is altered to limit growth of fungi and bacteria that cause spoilage. This food preservation technique is commonly used for lengthening shelf lives of cakes, bread, fruit, vegetables, seafood, and meat. The process could also be applied to foods in bulk especially those in equipped storage containers. However, this food preservation process is usually in conjunction with several other techniques like refrigeration.
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• Old School Food Preservation
• Other Methods Of Food Preservation
• Physical And Chemical Food Preservation
• Practical Advantages Of Food Preservation
• Preserving Food Through Drying
• Preserving Food Through Freezing
• Preserving Food Through Pickling
• Preserving Vegetables By Freezing