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Food Technology

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Food technology



 
 
Food technology, or Food tech for short is the application of food science
Food science

Food science is a discipline concerned with all technical aspects of food, beginning with harvesting or slaughter , and ending with its cooking and consumption....
 to the selection, preservation
Food preservation

Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or greatly slow down spoilage caused or accelerated by micro-organisms....
, processing
Food processing

Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food or to transform food into other forms for ingestion by humans or animals either in the home or by the food industry....
, packaging, distribution
Food distribution

Food distribution, a method of distributing food from one place to another, is a very important factor in public nutrition. Where it breaks down, famine, malnutrition or illness can occur....
, and use of safe
Safety

Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable....
, nutritious
Nutrition

Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with good nutrition....
, and wholesome food
Healthy diet

A healthy diet is one that helps maintain or improve health. It is important for the prevention of many chronic disease such as: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer....
.

Food scientists and food technologists study the physical, microbiological, and chemical makeup of food
Food

Food is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be Eating or Drinking by an animal or human for nutrition or pleasure....
.






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Food Tech Room Marling
Food technology, or Food tech for short is the application of food science
Food science

Food science is a discipline concerned with all technical aspects of food, beginning with harvesting or slaughter , and ending with its cooking and consumption....
 to the selection, preservation
Food preservation

Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or greatly slow down spoilage caused or accelerated by micro-organisms....
, processing
Food processing

Food processing is the set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food or to transform food into other forms for ingestion by humans or animals either in the home or by the food industry....
, packaging, distribution
Food distribution

Food distribution, a method of distributing food from one place to another, is a very important factor in public nutrition. Where it breaks down, famine, malnutrition or illness can occur....
, and use of safe
Safety

Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable....
, nutritious
Nutrition

Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with good nutrition....
, and wholesome food
Healthy diet

A healthy diet is one that helps maintain or improve health. It is important for the prevention of many chronic disease such as: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer....
.

Food scientists and food technologists study the physical, microbiological, and chemical makeup of food
Food

Food is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be Eating or Drinking by an animal or human for nutrition or pleasure....
. Depending on their area of specialization, food scientists may develop ways to process, preserve, package, or store food, according to industry and government specifications and regulation
Regulation

Regulation refers to "controlling human or societal behaviour by rules or restrictions." Regulation can take many forms: law restrictions promulgated by a government authority, self-regulation, social regulation , co-regulation and market regulation....
s. Consumers seldom think of the vast array of foods and the research and development that has resulted in the means to deliver tasty, nutritious, safe, and convenient
Convenience

Convenience is anything that is intended to save time, energy or frustration. A convenience store at a petrol station, for example, sells items that have nothing to do with gasoline/petrol, but it saves the consumer from having to go to a grocery store....
 foods.

In some schools, food technology is part of the curriculum
Curriculum

In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of wiktionary:deed and experiences through which children grow and mature in becoming adults....
 and teaches, alongside how to cook, nutrition and the food manufacturing process.

Early history of food technology

Research in the field now known as food technology has been conducted for decades. Nicolas Appert
Nicolas Appert

Nicolas Appert , born in Ch?lons en Champagne was the France inventor of airtight food preservation. Appert, known as the "father of canning," was a confectioner....
’s development in 1810 of the canning
Canning

File:Berthold Weiss Canned Foods.jpgFile:Canned food factory .jpgCanning is a method of food preservation in which the food is processed and sealed in an airtight container....
 process was a decisive event. The process wasn’t called canning then and Appert did not really know the principle on which his process worked, but canning has had a major impact on food preservation techniques.

Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was a France chemist and microbiologist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and prevention of disease. His experiments supported the germ theory of disease, also reducing mortality from puerperal fever , and he created the first vaccine for rabies....
's research on the spoilage of wine
Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage often made of fermentation grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients....
 and his description of how to avoid spoilage in 1864 was an early attempt to put food technology on a scientific basis. Besides research into wine spoilage, Pasteur did research on the production of alcohol
Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is any organic compound in which a hydroxyl Functional group is bound to a carbon atom of an alkyl or substituted alkyl group....
, vinegar
Vinegar

Vinegar is an acidic liquid processed from the fermentation of ethanol in a process that yields its key ingredient, acetic acid . It also may come in a diluted form....
, wines and beer
Beer

Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and Fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal?the most common of which is malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely used....
, and the souring of milk
Milk

Milk is an opaque white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals . It provides the primary source of nutrition for newborn mammals before they are able to digestion other types of food....
. He developed pasteurization
Pasteurization

Pasteurization is a process which slows microbial growth in foods. The process was named after its creator, France chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur....
—the process of heating milk and milk products to destroy food spoilage and disease-producing organisms. In his research into food technology, Pasteur became the pioneer into bacteriology
Bacteria

The Bacteria are a large group of unicellular microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals....
 and of modern preventive medicine
Medicine

Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
.

By 1940's to 1950's, the original four departments that had taught the subject under different names (including those at the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts

The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system of the Massachusetts.The system includes University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Massachusetts Boston, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth , University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School....
 and the University of California
University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges s...
) had been retitled "food science", "food science and technology", or a similar variant.

Developments in food technology

Several companies in the food industry have played a role in the development of food technology. These developments have contributed greatly to the food supply. Some of these developments are:

  • Instantized Milk Powder
    Powdered milk

    Powdered milk is a manufactured dairy product made by evaporating milk to Drying . One purpose of drying milk is to preserve it; milk powder has a far longer shelf life than liquid milk and does not need to be refrigeration, due to its low moisture content....
     - D.D. Peebles (U.S. patent 2,835,586) developed the first instant milk powder, which has become the basis for a variety of new products that are rehydratable in cold water
    Water

    Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
     or milk. This process increases the surface area
    Surface area

    Surface area is how much exposed area an object has. It is expressed in square units. If an object has flat Face , its surface area can be calculated by adding together the areas of its faces....
     of the powdered product by partially rehydrating spray-dried milk powder.


  • Freeze Drying
    Freeze drying

    Freeze-drying is a dehydration process typically used to Food preservation a perishable material or make the material more convenient for transport....
     - The first application of freeze drying was most likely in the pharmaceutical industry; however, a successful large-scale industrial application of the process was the development of continuous freeze drying of coffee.


  • High-Temperature Short Time Processing - These processes for the most part are characterized by rapid heating and cooling, holding for a short time at a relatively high temperature and filling aseptically into sterile
    Sterilization (microbiology)

    Sterilization refers to any process that effectively kills or eliminates transmissible agents from a surface, equipment, article of food or medication, or biological culture medium....
     containers.


  • Decaffeination
    Decaffeination

    Decaffeination is the act of removing caffeine from coffee, Mate , cocoa, tea leaves and other caffeine-containing materials. In the case of coffee, various methods can be used....
     of Coffee
    Coffee

    Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the Coffea. Caffeinated coffee has a stimulating effect in humans....
     and Tea
    Tea

    Tea refers to the agricultural products of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods....
     - Decaffeinated coffee and tea was first developed on a commercial basis in Europe
    Europe

    Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
     around 1900. The process is described in U.S. patent 897,763. Green coffee beans are treated with steam or water to around 20% moisture. The added water and heat separate the caffeine
    Caffeine

    Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a psychoactive stimulant drug and a mild diuretic. Caffeine was discovered by a German chemist, Friedrich Ferdinand Runge, in 1819....
     from the bean to its surface. Solvent
    Solvent

    A solvent is a liquid or gas that dissolves a solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution.The most common solvent in everyday life is water....
    s are then used to remove the caffeine from the beans. In the 1980s, new non-organic solvent techniques have been developed for the decaffeination of coffee and tea. Carbon dioxide
    Carbon dioxide

    Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalent bond to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state....
     under supercritical conditions is one of these new techniques. U.S. patent 4,820,537 was issued to General Foods
    General Foods

    General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the United States by C. W. Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895....
     Corp. for a CO2 decaffeination process.


  • Process optimization
    Process optimization

    Process optimization is the discipline of adjusting a process so as to optimize some specified set of parameters without violating some constraint....
    - Food Technology now allows production of foods to be more efficient, Oil saving technologies are now available on different forms. Production methods and methodology
    Methodology

    Methodology can be defined as:# "the analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline";# "the systematic study of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline"; or...
     have also become increasingly sophisticated.


External links

  • International Food Information Service (IFIS).
  • Worldwide food processing industry organisations and projects.
  • Largest consumer oriented information on food science and technology in many languages
  • Big knowledge base on the food processing industry in Europe.
  • Food Science research at the Bragg Institute in Australia
  • Industrial food ingredients search engine, especially meant for food technologists


Food Technology journals

Drying Technology
  • , ISSN: 0023-6438, Elsevier
  • , ISSN: 0924-2244, Elsevier


Food Science and Technology Study Programs

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