New technologies in food preservation:
an introduction

A concise overview of new technologies and their role in preventing food spoilage, assuring food safety and stimulating product development

Effective food preservation is essential in securing a consistent supply of safe food. New approaches to food preservation can offer routes to reduced spoilage and wastage, longer shelf-life, improved product quality and even completely new products. This short book provides an introductory overview of new technologies, explaining the principles of how they work and illustrating these with examples of products from the marketplace or from research and development. It is aimed at anyone within the food industry, enforcement bodies or the educational sector who wishes to acquire a broad appreciation of the use of non-established technologies in food preservation.

The book begins with an introductory chapter which addresses the question 'why process food?'. This outlines the ways in which food can deteriorate and the role of the established technologies in preventing this deterioration. It then moves on to look at innovations with the established technologies of heat preservation, freezing and drying. Subsequent chapters then address specific technologies, each covering the principle on which the preservation effect rests, the effect of the technology on the microbiology and chemistry of food, and the applications the technology is finding. As with all the books in this series, the aim is to be illustrative rather than comprehensive.

Contents include:

• Introduction
• Developments with established technologies
  – Heat preserved foods
  – Frozen foods
  – Drying technologies
• High pressure processing
• Food irradiation
• Power ultrasound
• Pulsed electric fields
• Other technologies
• Conclusions
• References and further reading

Softcover -101 pages

The Key Topics in Food Science & Technology Series has been developed to meet a need within industry, education and enforcement bodies for industrially relevant introductory guides to specific aspects of food science and technology.