Food processing
From Free net encyclopedia
Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food for consumption by humans. The food processing industry utilizes these processes. Food processing often takes clean, harvested or slaughtered and butchered components and uses these to produce attractive and marketable food products. Similar process are used to produce animal feed.
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Examples
Following are common food processing techniques:
- removal of unwanted outer layers, such as potato peeling or the skinning of Peaches
- Chopping or slicing, of which examples include potato chips, diced carrot, or candied peel.
- Mincing and macerating
- Liquefaction, such as to produce fruit juice
- Emulsification
- Cooking, such as boiling, broiling, frying, steaming or grilling
- Mixing
- Addition of gas such as air entrainment for bread or gasification of soft drinks
- Proofing
- spray drying
Extreme examples of food processing include the delicate preparation of deadly fugu fish, preparing space food for consumption under zero gravity, winemaking, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets.
History
Food processing dates back to the prehistoric ages when crude processing incorporated slaughtering, various types of cooking, such as over fires, smoking, steaming, oven baking), fermenting, sun drying and preserving with salt. Foods preserved this way were a common part of warriors and sailor's diets up until the introduction of canned food. These crude processing techniques remained essentially the same until the advent of the industrial revolution.
Modern food processing technology in the 19th and 20th century has largely been developed because of military needs. Using newly discovered industrial age technology, Nicolas Appert developed a vacuum bottling process to supply troops in the French army with food, which would eventually lead to tinning and later, canning by Peter Durand in 1810. Although initially expensive and somewhat hazardous due to lead used in the cans, canned goods would later become a staple around the world. Another important advance of the 19th century was pasteurization, discovered by Louis Pasteur in 1862.
In the 20th century, world war 2 and the space race drove the development of food processing even further with advances such as spray drying, juice concentrates, freeze drying and the introduction of artificial sweetners, colorants, and preservatives such as sodium benzoate and saccharine. Late 20th century food processing would reach its peak with products like dried instant soups, reconstituted fruits and juices, and self cooking meals like the MRE food ration.
Benefits
Benefits of food processing includes toxin removal, preservation, improving flavor, easing marketing and distribution tasks, and increasing food consistency. In addition, it increases seasonal availability of many foods, enables transportation of delicate perishable foods across long distances, and makes many kinds of foodstuffs safe to eat by removing the microorganisms. Modern supermarkets would not be feasible without modern food processing techniques, long voyages would not be possible, and military campaigns would be significantly more difficult and costly to execute.
Modern food processing also improves the quality of life for allergics, diabetics, and other people who cannot consume some common food elements. Food processing can also add extra nutrients.
Negative points
Food processing frequently lowers nutritional value, and sometimes toxic chemicals are added or created in the food during processing such as nitrites, or aromatic hydrocarbons. Several food additives have been found to cause health problems and some techniques alter food flavor negatively. In addition, high quality and hygiene standards must be maintained to ensure consumer safety and not all food processors comply with these standards.
Proponents of the raw food diet advocate consumption of foods prepared with very little food processing.
Industries
Food processing industries and practices include the following:
See also
External links
Other sources
Fábricas de alimentos, 9th edition (in Spanish) Nutritional evaluation of food processing, Food preservation 2nd edition, by Normal W. Desrosier