Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Processing, Storage and Quality of Cook-Chill
or Cook-Freeze Foods
Atef Elansari and Alaa El-Din A. Bekhit
7.1
Introduction
Over the history of mankind, food preservation has played a crucial role in alleviating
hunger and famine when food was less abundant and was instrumental in supplying
edible foods for armies, voyagers and explorations that led to signifi cant changes in
human history. Progress in food preservation and processing can be considered as
four main processing paradigm shifts over human history: (1) production of safe
foods (early human trials-1950s); (2) production of safe food that have desirable
sensory properties, i.e. looks good and tastes good, (1960s-1980s); (3) production of
safe high quality food that is nutritionally sound (1990s-2000s); and 4) production of
safe nutritious high quality food that delivers specifi c functions (2000s-present).
Hence, the food industry moved from primitive concepts, such as simple dehydrated
products and cured foods, to technologies such as canning, refrigeration and freezing.
The purpose was to meet the demands for healthy and nutritious safe foods.
The increased demand for ready to eat fast meals prepared by food catering sec-
tors outside the home during the 1960s highlighted the value of cooked-chilled and
cooked-frozen foods. Signifi cant interest in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in imple-
mentation of the technology at the commercial or industrial scale. The interest in
technology development decreased during the 1970s and the 1980s due to high
production costs associated with cost of electricity, labour and the capital cost of
equipment. Total food expenditure on the meals prepared outside the home was
