Food Processing
Food Processing is the transformation of raw ingredients, by physical or chemical means into food, or of food into other forms. Food processing combines raw food ingredients to procedure marketable food products that can be easily prepared and served by the costumer. Food processing typically involves activities such as mincing and macerating, liquefaction, emulsification, and cooking (such as boiling, broiling, frying, or grilling); pickling, pasteurization, and many other kinds of preservation; and canning or other packaging. (Primary processing such as dicing or slicing, freezing or drying when leading to secondary products are also included.
Health Benefits of food processing
Throughout the history of humanity, man has been mostly limited to consuming foods either readily available or preserved in limited fashion via smoking, salting and pickling. It was not until the Industrial Revolution and mass-producing techniques that processed, preserved foods became widely available. Food processing has numerous benefits as well as some drawbacks.
- Preservation
- Safety
- Convenience and Marketing
- Drawbacks
Trends in modern food processing
Health
Reduction of fat content in final product by using baking instead of deep-frying in the production of potato chips, another processed food.
Maintaining the natural taste of the product by using less artificial sweetener than was used before.
Hygiene
The rigorous application of industry and government endorsed standards to minimize possible risk and hazards. The international standard adopted HACCP.
Efficiency
Rising energy cost lead to increasing usage of energy-saving technologies, frequency converters on electrical drives, heat insulation of factory buildings and heated vessels, energy recovery systems, keeping a single fish frozen all the way from China to Switzerland.