FOOD QUALITY

Biosensors in food analysis

2011-12-20T01:11:00.000-08:00

Biosensors are analytical devices based on the direct spatial coupling containing a biological active material recognition element like an enzyme, antibody or microbe coupled to a chemical or physical transducer including and electrochemical (electrode), mass (piezoelectric crystals, or acoustic wave devices), optical (optrodes) and thermal detector.

It converts the biochemical signal into a quantifiable electrical signal.

As biological recognition elements, enzymes and antibodies certainly still dominate in the commercial market of biosensors.

Biosensors have a tremendous potential for the detection of microbial contamination in foodstuff and the microarray technology leads to simultaneously detection of different pathogens.

Among the many advantages offered by biosensors in food quality control and processing, these devices can be used for online-line processes or discrete sampling.

A wide range of enzyme biosensors for applications in food analysis have been describe, e.g. for detection of glucose, carbohydrates., ethanol, starch and phenol. In contaminant analysis, enzyme biosensors have largely been used for organophosphorus and carbamate pesticide and herbicide analysis.

The more remarkable characteristics of biosensing devices which converts them in unique attractive options to compete with other technologies in the agriculture and food market including: high selectivity, high sensitivity, short time of analysis, ability to be included in integrated systems, automation easiness, capability of response in real time, versatility allowing the design of ‘a la crate’ devices and low cost.

Biosensors in food analysis

Cross contamination in food

2011-10-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

Cross contamination is one of the major causes of foodborne illness and can easily occur during preparation.

This happens when bacteria or other pathogens are transferred form one food or item to another.

This occurs when a raw food touches or shares contact with ready to eat or cooked foods. Cross contamination is using the same knife to cut both chicken and rolls.

If raw chicken is stored in the refrigerator above lettuce and the chicken juice drips onto the lettuce this is also cross contamination.

Cross contamination can be prevented by:
*Preventing raw, ready to eats and cooked foods touching each other while shopping, preparing or storing.
*Preventing blood and juices from raw foods dripping onto cooked foods
*Preventing bacteria from being transferred on hands, knives, utensils, chopping boards or work surfaces.

Cross contamination can occur when unwashed hands come in contact with food, when a microorganism carrying food comes in contact with another food, or when food comes in contact with contaminated surface.
Cross contamination in food

Texture Prolife of Food

2011-10-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

Texture is an important aspect of food quality, sometimes even more important than flavor and color. It is the textural characteristics perceived in a food product.

It is combination of physical properties perceived by senses of kinaesthesis, touch, sight and hearing.

Texture was most important in bland foods and foods that are crunchy or crisp. It influences the people’s image of food.

The characteristics most often referred to hardness, cohesiveness and moisture content.

In 1960s, scientists interested in developing a method that would allow the evaluation of texture and which would built on a well defined and rational foundation.

The purpose of texture characteristics classification system to bridge the gap between consumer texture terminology and the rheological properties of the product.

Textural characteristics have been classified into three main classes:
*Mechanical characteristics
*Geometrical characteristics
*Other characteristics, related mainly to moisture and fat content

This classification formed the basis of the Texture Profile method. Mechanical properties are defined as those characteristics related to the reaction of springiness, adhesiveness and viscosity. It’s described qualitatively and quantitatively.

Geometrical properties are related to the arrangement of the physical constituents within the food and been described qualitatively and semi-quantitatively.

The texture profile is defined as the organoleptic analysis of the texture complex of a food in terms of its mechanical, geometrical, fat and moisture characteristics, the degree of each present and the order in which they appear from the first bite though complete mastication.

In the texture profile, analysis of the properties is done at each of the three stages of ingestion: initial, masticatory and residual.
Texture Prolife of Food
Texture Prolife of Food

Good Manufacturing Practices

2011-10-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

Globally, food safety issues are of the top priorities of the food industry, government food safety regulators, and consumers as a result of a significant increase in the number of foodborne disease cases and outbreaks reported worldwide.

Food safety begins on the farm and continue through processing, transportation and storage until the food is consumed. GMP on of the example of food safety programs that are commonly used to control and monitor microbial contamination of food.

Good Manufacturing Practices or GMP can be defined as part of a food and drink control operation aimed at ensuring that products are consistently manufactured to a quality appropriate to their intended use.

GMP aims to produce safe and wholesome food through well-co0ntrilled operations that avoid waste and any type of contamination.

A preventive approach to the safety of foods is more effective than testing or inspection of processed foods at the final stage. GMO assures food safety through vigilant measures at the source, product design and process control.

The various steps involved in GMP including:
*Safety of raw material
*Use of food additives
*Applications of hygienic practices in handling, processing, packaging, labeling, distribution

GPP has been used for many years to ensure the microbiological safety and quality of food, and it provides a framework for hygienic food production.

The establishment of GMP is the outcome of long practical experience and it includes attention to environmental conditions in the food plant.
Good Manufacturing Practices

Food Preservation

2011-09-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

Food preservation is the application of techniques to prevent or minimize undesirable changes in food.

Preservation aims either to destroy or inhibit the growth of harmful microorganisms in food by making an environment unsuitable for them.

From the nutrition viewpoint, food preservation is essential in improving the general health of the family by supplying it with a varied and balanced diet.

Food preservation assures the consumer of a supply of foods that are out of season.

Preserved food can be transported long distances from where it is produce and stored for long periods in warehouse or homes without risk of its decomposed or endangering health.

Food preservation involves the use of heat, cold, drying, (water activity or Aw), acid (pH), sugar and salt, smoke, atmosphere, chemicals, radiation and mechanical methods.

A methods of making food safer that us well known and accepted today is pasteurization.

Pasteurization is the process of heating foods to a temperature for a designated period of time to destroy disease-causing and/or food spoilage bacteria.

It is to reduced the number of harmful microorganism, of present, to a level at which they do not constitute a significant health hazard.

A newer form of pasteurization is called ultrahigh temperature (UHT) pasteurization.

The amount of bacteria killed a heat method such as pasteurization depends how high the temperature is, and how long the food is held at the low temperature for a long time.

But using very high heat means that the food can be kept at that heat for a shorter time.

Preservation techniques that limit the availability of water, such as drying, salting and smoking and those that use heat, such as canning and pasteurization, dramatically alter the nature of food itself.

High pressure processing is another technology gaining popularity in recent years wherein high pressure are used to inactivate microorganisms in foods.

There are are several methods of applying electricity instead of heat to a pasteurize food; these technique are referred to as cold pasteurization. Irradiation, ohmic heating and high intensity pulsed electric fields are some of these technologies.

Irradiation methods involve treatment with ionizing radiation – gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet radiation and microwaves.

Pulsed food processing technologies include pulsed electric fields, pulsed light fields, and pulsed magnetic field.
Food Preservation

Caterers should adopt HACCP

2011-08-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Caterers should adopt HACCP
Caterer, large and small. usually have a vast number of raw materials and a high turnover of staff.

The principle of HACCP remain very relevant to this environment, however, and the implementation may begun with the use of a simple process flow diagram.

With reasonable understanding of the basic rules of food safety and hygiene, it should be possible to consider what might go wrong at each of the steps in the process.

Adopting good hygiene practice within the catering environment at all times will be an essential ongoing requirement in order to ensure that the HACCP approach will add real value and that food safety management is enhance.

Although not all caterers will have the in-depth technical knowledge to conduct what some might refer to as real HACCP study. An attempt to understand and adopt the HACCP Principles should make significant improvement to the level of food safety control possible.

The output of the studies may look less technical, the Critical Limits may not have been established through in-depth testing, but with certain degree of external; support, a simple but effective, HACCP Plan can be put in place.

Many catering organizations already adopted the HACCP system of food safety management to identify, monitor, and control contamination risks and hazards associated with food-borne illness.
Caterers should adopt HACCP.

The hazards include the biological, chemical and physical properties that may cause contamination, and the critical control points are those points , steps or procedures during which a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated or reduced.
Caterers should adopt HACCP

HACCP Programs

2011-08-15T23:29:00.001-07:00

HACCP programs should be strictly related to food safety.

Critical Control Points should only be used to control those points in a process where lack of control will likely result in the development of a potential safety hazard.

They should not be used to control non hazardous situations which are of serious regulatory, consumer or economic consequence.

Too much monitoring (i.e. inclusion of non-hazardous points) will dilutes out the HACCP effort, resulting in nothing being monitored or the wrong points being monitored.

There will be then no insurance that the product being release meets all safety requirements and therefore, a potential hazard may be delivered to consumers.

Non-safety related monitoring procedures should be part of a standard quality assurance programs.
HACCP Programs

Chemicals Hazard

2011-07-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

Chemical hazard are chemicals that can get into food by improper storage of chemical or chemical containers or by using chemicals improperly.

Generally, industrial pollutants are unintentional contaminants of foods,, even if regulated, may be difficult to control.

Some toxic chemical compounds can occur naturally in foods and in the environment.

Chemical hazards can cause food borne disease and the consumer health. This includes naturally occurring substances, such as allergens, and toxins and contamination of food with chemicals substance, their residue or their degradation products at levels that can harm the consumers.

Chemical hazards include:
• pesticides
• food additives and preservatives
• cleaning and sanitizing supplies
• toxic metals that leech through worn cookware and equipment
• lubricants used on equipment

The above chemicals must be approved by federal agency before they can be legally used. If a chemical leaves a residue in food, the cognizant agency is responsible for establishing a tolerance level – the amount of residue that can legally remain in or on raw and processed foods.
Chemicals Hazard

Cost Effective of HACCP

2011-07-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

HACCP is widely recognized in the food industry as an effective approach to establishing good production, sanitation and manufacturing practices that produce safe foods.

After the initial setting up of the system, be extremely cost effective.

First by building the controls into the process, failure can be identified at an early stage and therefore less finished product will be rejected at the end of the production line. It will prevent of waste and incident costs.

Secondly, by identifying the Critical Control Points, a limited technical resource can be targeted at the management of these.

Thirdly the disciplines of applying HACCP are such that there is almost always going to be improvement in product quality. Adequate training of personnel is a key to effective implementation of the HACCP system.

HACCP entails extensive planning, commitment of resources and new transaction disciplines - monitoring, cord keeping, audit/verification procedures and trend analysis techniques.

Consumer awareness of their right to purchase food that is safe has increase significantly over the past few years.

Here the controls used to prevent the presence of a harmful contaminant, such as glass are so often likely also to prevent the occurrence of less harmful contaminant, therefore providing brand quality protection as well as consumer protection.

An effective HACCP based product safety will include statement that: designate product safety as a top business priority.
Cost Effective of HACCP

Food Hygiene in Food Preparation

2011-07-02T02:47:00.000-07:00

Preparing and supplying food that is safe to eat involves careful food hygiene.

Food hygiene refers to the practices which should be followed to make sure that food is safe and wholesome throughout all the stages of production from purchase to consumption.

It’s aimed at keeping food clean by:
*Protecting food from contamination by bacteria
*Preventing bacteria from multiplying in food
*Destroying bacteria by cooking

Premises, staff and equipment must be kept clean. Food must be handled and stored safely.

It must be prepared in safe surroundings to reduce the risk of serious illness.

Everybody involved in the production of food should receive training about safe practice and how to use them in the workplace.

In food preparation, personal hygiene refers to the way the person keep themselves clean and handle food to keep it safe to eat.

Poor food hygiene can lead to outbreaks of food poisoning which can cause serous illness. Some groups of the population are particularly vulnerable, for example the elderly, the very young and people who are already ill.

Also with more frequent people away from home, outbreaks of food borne disease are becoming more frequent.

The food handler should know that some microorganisms are useful to human and some are harmful causing food spoilage and disease.

Poor hygiene can also result in wastage of contaminated food, infestation by pests, time of from work because of illness, loss of customers and profits, as well as possible legal action.

Food that is kept too long can go bad and contain toxic chemicals or pathogens and food stuff that are eaten raw, such as fruits or vegetables, can become contaminated by dirty hands, unclean water or flies.

Improperly prepared food can also cause chemical poisoning: cassava leaf that ahs not been properly pounded and cooked, for example, may contain dangerous levels of cyanide.

Food hygiene is essential because the food that have been eaten plays an important part in keeping people healthy. Food hygiene involves more that cleanliness.
Food Hygiene in Food Preparation

Defining Food Quality and Food Safety

2011-06-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Food safety and food quality terminology may sometimes be confusing. Quality includes all product attributes that influence a products’ value to consumers.

This can include positive attributes such as flavor or pleasing appearance. It is also includes such negative attributes as spoilage contamination with nontoxic and noninfectious filth, discoloration, and odors.

If all quality attributes were detectable to consumers, then markets would determine the quality supplied.

The term quality has become a focus point in all discussion regarding the production and provision of food products to markets and consumers – quality in the broad sense of serving the consumers’ needs by producing them with the right product at the right time and with the right service.

The distinction between safety and quality has implication for public policy, Safety refers to hazards to human health in food. Quality refers to all attributes and thus might include safety.

Food safety is an inherent element of quality. It receives special attention by policy and legislation because of its key importance for consumers’ health and the responsibility for food safety by private and policy alike.

Food safety is the extent to which those requirements relating specifically to characteristics or properties that have potential to be harmful to health or to cause illness or injury are met,

It is convenient to separate food safety from more general quality issues. Public efforts should focus in health hazards and quality issues can be left to private industry management.

One reason why distinction is difficult in practice is that many quality attributes are not detectable. Market failure occur for quality attributes other than food safety.

Quality grades and standards can be voluntary or mandatory, When they are mandatory they can be a disguised means of limiting supply and increasing producer profits.

The distinction between food quality and food safety needs to be made primarily because of the much greater importance that must be attached to protecting consumers from food borne illness or injuries.
Defining Food Quality and Food Safety

The Principles of HACCP

2011-06-16T02:27:00.000-07:00

The Principles of HACCP
The HACCP system consist of seven principles which outline how to establish, implement, and maintain a HACCP plan for the operation under study.

The HACCP Principles have international acceptance and details of this approach have been published by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods.

Principle 1
Conduct a hazard analysis. Prepare list of steps in the process, identify where significant could occur and describe the control measures.

Principle 1 describes where the HACCP Team should start. A Process Flow Diagram is put together detailing all the steps in the process from incoming raw materials to finished product. When complete the HACCP team identifies all the hazards that could occur at each stage establish the risk to determine the significant hazards and describes measures for their control. These may be existing or new control measures.

Principle 2
Determine the Critical Control Points (CCPs). When all the hazards and control measures have been described, the HACCP Team establishes the points here control is critical to assuring the safety of the product. These are the Critical Control Points of CCPs.

Principle 3
Establish Critical Limits for control measures associated with each identified CCP. The Critical Limits describe the difference between safe and unsafe product at the CCPs. They must involve a measurable parameter and may also be known as the absolute tolerance or safety limit for the CCP.

Principle 4
Establish a system to monitor control of the CCP. The HACCP Team should specify monitoring requirements for management of the CCP within its Critical Limits. This will involve specifying monitoring actions along with monitoring frequency and responsibility.

In addition, procedures will need to be established to adjust the process and maintain control according to the monitoring results.

Principle 5
Establish the corrective actions to be taken when monitoring indicates that a particular CCP is not under control. Corrective action procedures and responsibilities for their implementation need to be specified.

This will include action to bring the process back under control and action to deal with product manufactured while the process was out of control.

Principle 6
Establish procedures for verification to confirm that the HACCP System is working correctly. Verification procedures must be developed to maintain the HACCP System and ensure that it continues to work effectively.

Principle 7
Establish documentation concerning all procedures and records appropriate to these principle and their application. Records must be kept to demonstrate that the HACCP System is operating under control and that appropriate corrective action has been taken for any deviations from the Critical Limits.

This will provides evidence of safe product manufacture.
The Principles of HACCP

Food Quality Programs and Systems in Food Industry

2011-06-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

In general, these quality programs and systems are quality control, quality assurance and quality management.

They are generic in nature and are widely used by business organizations not only in the food industry, but in all industry sectors, as well as in some public sector organizations.

These programs and systems differ in their scope of activities and the complexity of their structure or framework.

Quality control programs are basics quality programs and quality management systems are more types of quality systems.

The term “quality management” describes a dynamic management perspective with an offensive and strategic vision.

In food industry, the objectives of these programs and systems is to achieve the food quality and food safety requirements.

In the food industry, a quality program is an activity or set of activities performed to ensure that the food quality and food safety requirements of a food are fulfilled.

Food quality requirements are established by laws and regulations and by customers and consumers.

A food industry quality system is an integrated set of documented food quality and food safety activities, with clearly established inter relationships among the various activities.

The objective of a quality system is to provide a food company with the capability to produce a food that fulfills all quality and safety requirements.

It also reduce a gap between customers’ risk perception and experts’ risk judgment and reach a level of risk perception where ‘distrust’ or unacceptable risk switches to ‘trust; or acceptable risk.

Quality control programs are common examples of quality programs; quality assurance systems and quality management systems are examples of quality systems.

Both quality programs and quality systems are used extensively in the food industry.

For any food company embarking on the adoption of a formal quality management system there are a number of avenues down which they might proceed.

The most obvious start is the introduction of a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP system.

The food manufacturer is in business to make and sell good at a profit.

Consumers will only buy and make repeat purchase of the food is perceived as being good value for money and generally only if they can rely on the product being of a consistent standard.

A firm needs therefore to establish a reputation for making a product to a certain standard and to maintain it.
Food Quality Programs and Systems in Food Industry

Managing safety and quality

2011-05-11T17:42:00.001-07:00

In practice, private management of quality and safety is increasingly complex and intertwined. There is a growing of process control approaches from farm to table in food production for industrial country markets.

Among all food enterprise, the large food retailer, eager to portray their industry as trustworthy, are tending to take greater responsibility for the safety of the food they sells.

The management of safety of a subset of more general quality management. Evaluation of food quality requires standards for each product served and a systematic process for evaluating food items to see that standards were met.

The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) system is used to address hazards that can be introduced at different points in the food chain or are difficult to measure.

The HACCP system focuses on prevention and control of hazards, rather than on end product testing.

It made its way into food system area and has continued as the standard for keeping food safe to consume.
An advantage of HACCP is to focus resources on the most important control pints, which can minimize resources used to improve safety.

HACCP’s main thrust is identifying critical control points that could affect quality or safety or f the food during procurement, processing and delivery of the finished food products and providing standards for each.

Properly applied, HACCP may lead to process redesign, which can reduce the cost of providing quality.

However assessment of food quality is not only a system selection question but a continuous quality improvement.

The acceptance of food by customer is the ultimate measure of quality. The customer interested in the quality of the product not the type of food production system.
Managing safety and quality

What is HACCP?

2011-05-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

HACCP is widely recognized in the food industry as an effective approach good production, sanitation and manufacturing practices safe foods.

It was developed nearly 35 years ago for astronauts, the FDA intends to eventually use it for much of the United States food supply.

The program for astronauts focuses on preventing hazards that could cause food borne illnesses by applying science-based controls, from raw material to finished products.

HACCP systems establish process control though identifying points in the production process that are most critical to monitor and control.

It provides feedback to direct corrective actions. HACCP’s preventive focus is seen as more cost effective than testing a product and them destroying or reworking it.

The system can be applied to control at any stage in the food system.

By focusing inspection at CCPs, HACCP improves the scientific basis for safety and control processes.

A CCP is “any point in the chain of food production from raw materials to finished product where the loss of control result in unaccepted food safety risk”.

Critical control points (CCP) may be located at any pint in the food production and manufacturing system for a food product where hazards need to be either prevented, elimination or reduce acceptable levels.

Monitoring of CCPs is done best by using indicators that can be measured easily. This focus on measurable indicators provides a more cost-effective approach to control than product sampling and testing, which is expensive and may not provide timely results.

CCP’s must be carefully developed and documented. They must be used only for purposes of product safety or where use must be justified by the critical nature of the CCP.

This especially important food borne ,microbial pathogens, because their incidence is low and costs of testing are high.

Effective control mechanisms are put in place to ensure that then the potential failure are prevented from occurring.

The second type of regulation coming into wider use is food product labeling to indicate potential hazards or methods of food production.

This allow consumers who are at higher risks to choose safer products or to prepare food so as to avoid risk.

The original system was pioneered by the Pillsbury Company working alongside NASA and the US Army Laboratories at Natick.

It was based on the engineering system, Failure, Mode, and Effect Analysis, which looks at what could potentially go wrong at each stage in an operation together with possible causes and the likely effect.

The first comprehensive treatise on HACCP published in 1973 by the Pillsbury Company, was used to train FDA inspectors in HACCP principles during promulgation of the successful federal sealed containers.
What is HACCP?

Textural Properties of Food

2011-04-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

Most foods are complex disperse systems, there are great difficulties in establishing objective criteria for criteria measurement.

It is also difficult in many cases to relate results obtained by instrumental techniques of measurement to the type of response obtained by sensory panel tests.

The characteristics of foods a affect consumers preferences. Certain foods are preferred because of their hard texture and some because of their soft texture.

The terms for the textural properties of foods have a long history. Many of the terms are accepted but are often poorly define descriptive terms.

Some of the examples of such terms:
Consistency denoted those aspects of texture that relate to flow and deformation. It can be said to encompass all of the rheological properties of a product. It can refers to the degree of viscosity or density of product.

Hardness has been defined as resistance to deformation. Hardness a is the most frequently tested parameters.

Firmness is essentially identical to hardness but is occasionally used to describe the property of a substance able to resist deformation under its own weight. It can be defined the force required to bite through the food.

Brittleness is the properties of fracturing before significant flow has occurred.
Textural Properties of Food

Aseptic Packaging

2011-02-19T03:40:00.000-08:00

Aseptic Packaging
The first invention was likely a device for carrying food. Hunters and gatherers needed to lighten the burden of bringing food back to a central camp.

These early camps were undoubtedly located near water, because the means of transporting liquid was still long way off.

As population grew and were forced to move father away from a secure source of water, the need to carry liquids became urgent. Skins and shells, followed by pottery and ceramics and then glass, metals and plastics, became the materials needed for storing, preserving and transporting liquids.

In 1989 the Institute of Food Technologist an organization of food scientists devoted to improving the production and distribution of food, selected aseptic packaging as “the most significant food science innovation in the past fifty years”.

Most consumers do not recognize the term “aseptic packaging,” but they instantly recognize this packaging concept as the familiar “juice box.”

This revolutionary packaging system first appeared in US supermarkets in the 1970s. Aseptic packaging is defined as “the filling of a commercially sterile product into sterile containers under aseptic conditions and sealing of the containers so that the reinjection is prevented”.

Aseptic packaging is more than just as container; it is a system that allows food manufacturer to fill a sanitized package with a sterile food product in a hygienic environment.

The word “aseptic” means that unwanted organisms have been eliminated from the packing system.

Ruben Rausing in Sweden reportedly conceived the concept for holding milk in a container made form a paperboard composite.

The original package had a tetrahedral shape and was called a Tetra Pak.

This new technology was married to aseptic technology, and a new industry was born. The box-shaped package that is so widely available is a laminate of six layers of three materials: paperboard 70% polyethylene 24%, and aluminum 6 %.

Each layer of material serves a specific purpose. The single layer of paperboard provides mechanical rigidity.

The aluminum foil layer acts as a gas and light barrier.

The outer polyethylene layer protect the ink layer and enables the package flaps to be sealed.

Two inner layers of polyethylene provide a liquid barrier and another layer binds the aluminum to the paperboard.

When it is sealed, the container can preserved milk, soy beverages, juice, soup, sauce, wine, tea and many other products for months without refrigeration or artificial preservatives.

Aseptic processing is not limited to retail food items. Aseptic bulk storage and transportation systems that can hold up to 1 million gallons of products such as orange juice have been designed.

These large commercial systems allowed food manufacturers to harvest fruit and vegetables at optimum growing periods, partially process the food, and store it for final processing at a later time.

Innovations in plastic technology and plasma discharge silica coating technology offer the promise that more foods will be packaged in efficient septic packages during the twenty first century.
Aseptic Packaging

Quality and Safety of Food on Airplane

2011-01-25T22:28:00.000-08:00

Quality and Safety of Food on Airplane
Serving quality airplane food is a logistical challenge. If the number or variety of meals needed is inaccurately calculated, customer dissatisfaction ensues.

Complicating this challenge is the large selection of speciality meals available including diabetic gluten-free, Hindu, kosher, lacto-ovo vegetarian, low fat, low sodium, Muslim, lactose free, vegan and vegetarian.

Despite the limitation of space, cooking technology, and cost, efforts are made to serve airline food consistent with a typical meal, especially on long flights encompassing one or more mealtimes.

Such a meal may consist of a main dish protein item, vegetable, starch, salad, roll and dessert.

A meal served in coach or economy class on a transoceanic United Airlines flight consisted of chicken breast with white sauce, broccoli, carrots, wild rice, crackers worth cheese, a salad, a roll and strawberry ice cream.

Airline food is tightly regulated and monitored to avoid highly allergenic foods as well as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) food safety violations.

While not as critical, airlines also avoid particularly strong or potentially offensive foods such as raw onions and items like beans that are likely to cause flatulence.

As the airline industry strives for ever greater efficiency, aircraft are at the gate for increasingly short time periods. During this intensive period of refueling, cleaning, and aircraft maintenance, in flight caterers must be at the ready to load a well calculated number of meals, as well as snacks beverages, specialty meals and crew meals. All at proper temperatures for food safety.

Any misstep can cause a flight delay, and as timeliness ranks second only to passenger and crew safety in importance, a late caterer – or worse, one serving food that physically, chemically or biologically contaminated – can trigger millions of dollars in lawsuits lost revenue and lost contracts.
Quality and Safety of Food on Airplane

The Sense of Taste

2010-08-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

The Sense of Taste
In physiological terms, the sense of taste can be describe as the sensations perceive in the mouth when a food and drink is consumed.

This is basically accomplished by chemical interaction of food components with taste sensory tissues in the tongue and other areas in the mouth. Commonly can be called these the “taste buds”.

However, the overall sensory impact experienced when food is tasted involves more than just the actual individual taste sense.

It is often more of a combination of taste with several additional senses – olfactory (smell), visual, touch and sometimes, even sound.

Would freshly squeezed orange juice taste like orange without the aromatic impact of the volatile citrus oils in the peel and the juice itself on sense of smell?

Would it taste like orange if, for some absurd reason, it was deep purple in color?

Would we not think something was wrong if we did not feel and sort of “hear” the small little juice sacs pop in our mouth as we swirl the liquid around our tongues?

Food technologists tend to think in terms of a drink’s “sensory properties” when evaluating it for taste.

These are the different sensory perception factors that impact on our brain: sweetness, sourness, flavor, mouthfeel, color, clarity, etc.

In a carbonated soft drink the gas content or its “fizziness” is a critical factor as well.

In addition to the sensory factors the temperature and presentation of the tested product would also play a significant part in the test results.

Therefore, a “taste test” would not only mean how does it taste but would also refer to a general evaluation of its sensory properties.
The Sense of Taste

Basic of Sensitization in Atopic Allergy

2010-08-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

Basic of Sensitization in Atopic Allergy
During the first year of life, allergic sensitization occurs readily via the intestinal tract because the protective immunologic mechanisms are not fully developed.

Breast milk offers passive protection during the vulnerable age but is also a possible route of sensitization.

Overproduction of IgE is characteristics of atopic allergy. Many healthy children develop IgE antibodies, against egg white for instance, during the first year of life.

These antibodies usually disappears in a few months and are probably a reflection of the normal humoral immunoresponse.

However, in those children who manifest a clinical allergy to egg white, antibodies disappear more slowly. It has been postulated that the function of cells, especially lymphocytes, controlling IgE synthesis is not in balance.

Atopy may be related to deficient or retarded maturation of cells suppressing IgE synthesis.

The protective mechanism of the intestinal mucosa, although their exact nature is not known, prevent sensitization effectively. From animal studies it is known that mice develop antibodies when given cow’s milk protein parenterally.

However, if the animal is fed cow’s milk before the injection, it develops immunotolerence and no antibodies can be detected.

The role of mucosal IgA is vitally important. Quantitative or qualitative deficiencies of IgA enhance the manifestation of circulation antibodies to foreign proteins as well as the formation of immunocomplexes.

If the permeability of the gastrointestinal or respiratory tract is increased for some reason, allergens penetrate the mucous membranes more easily and induce an immunologic response.

The function of the intestinal mucosal barrier is disturbed by infections, dietary habits, ingestions of alcohol and drugs and so fourth.
Basic of Sensitization in Atopic Allergy

Conformity to Product : Food Quality and Consumer Value

2010-07-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Conformity to Product : Food Quality and Consumer Value
Conformity means the fulfillment of requirements. Both requirements of the product and those of the consumer need to be fulfilled.

Food Quality
Food quality relates to the quality attributes of the food and to the processes for making that food. Processes will have been designed to consistently achieve the required attributes within the parameters of the product specification. The assurance of product conformity to specification is one of the most important tasks of the technical function within food companies.

Consumer Value
Consumer value relates to the design of the food i.e., the types of value the consumer expects or desires from the product. It is for the marketing function to ascertain both the needs of the consumer and the context the products to be used.

There is closed relationships between food quality and consumer value and the need for the technical and marketing functions to cooperate in the realization of new products and in the management of existing products.

Both functions must be able to understand the nature of the consumer requirements as well as process capabilities and achievable product specifications. Supply problems, technological progress, changes in food law and changing consumer attitudes are example of situations where it may be necessary to substitute existing food ingredients in successful product lines.

Marketing input into both new and modified specification is imperative for successful change management.
Conformity to Product : Food Quality and Consumer Value

Top Down Quality Management

2010-06-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Top Down Quality Management
Every company whether it is large or small, old or new or produces few or numerous products has a defined management structure. Someone, the top decision maker, is ultimately responsible for everything that occurs at the company.

In addition to determining the direction of the company, the top decision maker must decide the company’s standard of quality.

What will be acceptable? What defects are allowed and what are not? Are there set quality specification or are the finished product specifications moving targets? Will there be a quality program? Who is responsible for quality program? All these questions are underlying component of one of the most decisions made at management’s highest level.

In most companies, the quality program is overseen by a single individual usually titled quality control manager, quality assurance manager, technical services director, vise president of quality, or something similar denoting the area responsibility and level of accountability.

This person traditionally is schooled in a science discipline such as food science and technology, foods and nutrition, microbiology, or holds an interdisciplinary degree that encompass classes in microbiology, food safety, nutrition, chemistry, biochemistry and engineering.

He or she is tasked with the responsibility of creating a quality control program that is multifaceted, customer, supplier, government and competitor interactive, interdisciplinary, nontechnology based but technology supported and internal interdepartmentally, supportive.

Each food manufacturing company has its own culture and identity based on many factors, including age, location, products, ownership structure and knowledge and experience of employees.

Although each factor contributes to the structure and function of the quality department, the role and responsibility of bringing ides that improve or support the quality unction of the company to the table lie almost exclusively with the quality control manager who is to seek out, analyze and implement new concepts and technologies that replace or strengthen existing quality control systems.
Top Down Quality Management

Dimension of Quality

2010-05-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

Dimension of Quality
There are eight dimensions of quality to link customer requirements to engineering design.

Performance
Refers to the primary operating characteristics of the product or service; they are usually measurable, e.g., miles per gallon, number of rooms, baths etc. in a house.

Features
Additional characteristics that enhance the product’s or service’s appeal to the user, e.g., deluded ink used for news paper, glare-reducing coatings on bulbs.

Reliability
The likehood that a product will not fail within a specific time period, e.g., services that guarantee mail delivery (certified mail, etc).

Conformance
The precision with which the product or service meets the specified standards. Approaches such as using pre-specified tolerance limits.

Durability
Measures the length of a product’s life, e.g., shelf life of food products, light bulbs. When a product can be repaired, estimating durability is more complicated.

Serviceability
The speed with which the product can be put into service when it breaks down, as well as the competence and behavior of the service person. The speed of service can be measured by response time and mean time to repair.

Aesthetic
The subjective dimension indicating the kind of response a user has to a product. It represents the individual’s personal preference o the ways an individual responds to the look, feel, sound, taste and smell.

Perceived quality
Also a subjective dimension; it is the quality attributed to goods or service based on indirect measures. Inferring the quality of an airline by the cleanliness of the flip-down tray. Well maintained tools and an immaculate workplace may indicate a good workman.
Dimension of Quality

Enzymes can indicate quality of food

2010-04-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

Enzymes can indicate quality of food
Enzymes are not inactivated after harvest or slaughter and act as factors detrimental to food quality as assessed in term of color, flavour, aroma, texture and nutritional value.

Superior quality food can be obtained when heat treatment is applied just sufficient to inactivate the most crucial enzymes responsible for deterioration.

For each product, specific changes are responsible for deterioration in its quality.

Generally, polyphenoloxidase, chlorophyllase, lipoxygenase, lipase, esterase and protease may be responsible for color, flavor and aroma changes.

Pectic enzymes cellulose and hemicellulose may responsible for texture changes in plant materials.

Thiaminase, ascorbic acid oxidase or other oxidoreductase may cause a loss of nutritional quality in terms of some vitamins, or essential fatty acids.

These can act as indicator enzymes.

Among these, in the food industry peroxidase and alkaline phosphatases, the most heat stable enzymes, found in raw fruits and vegetables and milk respectively, have been used for testing the efficacy of blanching and pasteurization.

In fact heat treatment sufficient for the inactivation can lead to overheating of the sample leading to loss of quality.

It has been proved that best quality frozen food, stored peas , green beans, cauliflower and Brussels spirits can be obtained when 6.0-6.3%, 0.7-3.2%, 2.9-8.2% and 7,5-11.5% respectively, of peroxidase activity remains at the end of blanching.

Off flavour development and color loss in green beans peas and corn is caused by lipoxygenase.

Aroma deterioration in broccoli and cauliflower is by cystine lyase. Thus there is a need to pinpoint the indicator enzymes in each food and develop simple sensitive methods for their essay to be adaptable by the industry for routine online quality assessment.
Enzymes can indicate quality of food

Value of Play with the Food

2010-03-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

Value of Play with the Food
Play is an end in itself and implies the consumer having fun. Play allows for experimentation and the discovery of novelty. Children enjoy playing with their food, but adults may order them not to.

Some commercial snack foods currently targeted for inclusion in children’s lunch boxes encourage play e.g., by allowing biscuits and shaped slices of cheese and ham to be assembled in different ways.

As stringy cheese stick is also available that a child can pull at, shredding the cheese while eating it.

Eating shellfish, especially crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters which have not been dressed provides a socially acceptable opportunity for adults to play with their food.

The same might be said about eating spaghetti and cheese fondue; after all these do not represent the most efficient way of eating pasts and melted cheese, respectively.

Playing means improvising, and improvisation encourages learning.

Such learning can lead to increased involvement of a consumer with a particular product.

Consumers may pursue playful value by challenging the rules of the food marketer; on the other hand, marketers can sanction and encourage play, e.g., by suggesting that consumers customize dishes, such as adding fresh herbs to ready made soups.
Value of Play with the Food

Sampling for a Quality Assurance Program

2010-03-02T07:31:00.001-08:00

Sampling for a Quality Assurance Program
A sample is part of anything that is submitted for inspection or analysis that is representative of the whole population.

For the sample to be appropriate, it must be statically valid.

Validity is achieved by selecting the sample so as to ensure that each unit of material in a lot being sampled has an equal chance of being chosen for examination.

This process is called randomization.

A sample must be representative of the population to ensure integrity of results. A suggested sample number is the square root of the total number that would be sampled.

Representative samples are not only random samples, but must constitute a proportions amount of each part of the population.

For example, the sample must be identical with that of the gross material from which it was selected.

A major concern of quality assurance organization should be the collection, identification, and storage of a sufficient sample for inspection and analysis.
Sampling for a Quality Assurance Program

The meaning of quality

2010-02-16T05:08:00.000-08:00

The meaning of quality
Quality it has been said should make a product what it is, conforming to requirements or specification.

In this context, quality may be defined in different manners depending on the interest of the manufacturers, or how they want to impress it upon their customers.

One difficulty in using two approach is that the definition of quality is neither precise nor consensual.

Quality like terms such as effectiveness, satisfaction and leadership are descriptors rather than concepts and no objective reference exists.

Its definition in minds of the defines so no single definition is correct for every circumstances.

In each case, quality has always been use as a qualifier in describing some product or service high quality product, high quality education, high quality art, high quality health care, etc.

Thus, in industrial manufacturing practices quality can have several definitions, as follows:

Product based
Based on features or attributes of the product that enhance quality, e.g. organically manufactured food products as opposed to regular products.

User based
The user determines the quality of the product. Researchers define this user based as “fitness for use” e.g. ready-to-eat microwavable dinners as opposed to other forms of manufactured dinners.

Manufactured based
Conformance to specifications. Manufacturing engineering specifies the product characteristics and the more closely manufacturing can conform to those requirements, the better to quality of the product.

Value based
The element of price is introduced into the definition of quality. Quality is the degree to excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost. Value comprises price and quality of product and service.
The meaning of quality

Conservation of Excess Produce

2010-01-21T05:25:00.000-08:00

Conservation of Excess Produce
The revolution in methods of farming including animal husbandry, dairy farming, fishery and aquaculture along with modern techniques of food conservation has now been rewarded by occasional seasonal excess food production.

This necessitates application of established and novel technologies for the preservation of this excess food.

The following ways have emerged for conserving such glut production for later use, by reconstitution of necessary storage of seeds after drying; insect disinfection by conventional methods or by irradiation an packaging; use of low temperature, of freezing of controlled gaseous atmosphere for storage of high moisture foods, and of dehydration of milk, fruit and vegetables by fluidized bed, roller, spray or freeze-drying methods; separation of cream and skim milk and stabilizing these separately; and bulk preservation two chemicals, by thermal processing, by lasting, pickling, by aseptic packaging or by use of low dose radiation.

This is the only logical way of using precious food material, with nutrients retained as far as possible.

The exposure of milk to excess microbial load before it is pasteurized is known to be reflected in the high pyruvate concentration. The use of skimmed milk powder and butter oil to reconstitute liquid milk may be traced to the high level of free ammonia.
Conservation of Excess Produce

Recall of Unsatisfactory Products

2010-01-05T04:49:00.000-08:00

Recall of Unsatisfactory Products
Product recall is bringing back merchandise from the distribution system because of one or more unsatisfactory characteristics.

Every food business is susceptible to potential product recall.

A satisfactory public image of businesses can be preserved during a recall of a well organized plan is implemented.

During a recall, products are recovered from distribution as a result of voluntary action by a business firm or involuntary action due to FDA action.

The basic reasons for recall are best describe in the FDA recall classifications:

Class I: As a result of a situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use or exposure to a defective product will cause a serious public health hazard including death.

Class II: As a result of a situation where the use of or exposure to a defective product may cause a temporary adverse health hazard, or where a serious adverse public health hazard (death) is remote.

Class III: As a result of a situation where use of or exposure to a defective product will not cause a public health hazard.

An example of a Class I product recall would be contaminated with toxic substance (chemical or microbial).

A Class II product recall involves products contaminated with with food infection microorganisms.

A Class III example is products that do not meet a standard of identity.
Recall of Unsatisfactory Products

Changes during Processing

2009-11-12T01:03:00.000-08:00

Changes during Processing
The epoch making discovery of fire by human unleashed their innovative capabilities in many directions both beneficial and destructive yet the most important application that revolutionized the lifestyle of human beings and in no small measure contributed to their health and welfare is the thermal treatment of food.

Humans have learnt to cook, to broil, to steam, to bake, to roast, to fry, to smoke and to barbeque food on burning coal, wood or oil, transmitting heat through metal surface contact, by convection, by radiation, using steam or gas or fluids.

To these can be added in modern times, to pasteurize (UHT) treatments heating with infrared, microwave and ohmic heating.

Each of these treatments can transform raw food commodities into speciality appetizing products with distinctive texture, taste, flavour and aroma.

Along with these culinary inputs the food could be decontaminated of biohazards, such as pathogens, toxins, endogenous toxicants and anti-nutritional substances.

Its chewability and digestibility could be improved and unpalatable off taste and color eliminated or minimized.

Yet gradually some ill effects of processing on food compositions and wholesomeness started to come to light, for example the Maillard interaction between carbonyl and amino compounds and their subsequent cyclization and polymerization, caramelization reactions that lead to the formation of heterocyclic compounds, polycyclic aromatic molecules, nitrosamine and such other toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic molecules during processing.

Although these are known to be produced in trace quantities the consumer has become aware of the lurking danger.

Possible chronic cumulative effects are yet o be assessed. New analytical techniques with increased sensitivity and specificity are needed to monitor these molecules.
Changes during Processing

Conspicuous consumption

2009-10-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

Conspicuous consumption
Ostentation or conspicuous consumption, means some people’s desire to provide prominent visible evidence of their ability to afford luxury goods.

Status as value refers to the active manipulation of one’s own consumption behavior in order to influence others.

Status seeking may be understood as a response to a perceived gap between a present state and some ideal state.

This leads to a motivational state which is strongest among social groups chronically affected by status anxiety.

Dining in a celebrity chef’s restaurant may be motivated as much by the wish to be seemed at a fashionable venue as about the food.

Choosing consumption experiences to project the sort of image one wants to create is part of impression management.

In attribution theory, the causes of behavior can be ether dispositional or situational.

Attribution theory clearly status related consumption is situational motivated.

Food and drinks choices are means of signaling and re-enforcing, one’s status on a more or less ongoing basis, both within the family and in wider context.

Indeed, a cursory scan of the shopping trolleys of customers in a supermarket usually allows wide ranging inferences to be made about their status in society.

Status displays include what one does not consume as well as what one does, to the extent that avoidance products may become more important to status construction that the products one does consume.

Individuals may avoid certain supermarkets or manufacturer’s brands of food or they may boycott foods from some country in order to make a political point.

They may reject products from intensively reared animals on the grounds of animal cruelty and so on.

The motivational for specific consumption behaviors can change with time, so that’s a situationally motivated behavior can eventually become dispositionally motivated.

When this happens, consumption value ceases to be other-oriented and derives instead from the re-enforcement of self image.

For example, an odivdual may have become ociditioend to enjoying excellence in cosmuner products and may have stated to identify woth the lifestyle associated woth them.
Conspicuous consumption

Sensory Testing

2009-09-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

Sensory Testing
Sensory testing utilizes one or more of the five senses to evaluate foods.

Taste panels, comprising groups of people, taste specific food samples under controlled conditions and evaluate them in different ways depending on the particular sensory test being conducted.

This is the only type of testing that can measure consumer preference and acceptability.

When it comes to public opinion of a product, there is no substitute for tasting by individual consumers.

In addition to a taste –panel evaluation, objective tests can be established that correlate with sensory testing, which give an indication of consumer acceptability, but this may not always be sufficient.

In the development of new foods or when changing an existing product, it is necessary to determine consumer acceptance directly and objective testing is not sufficient, even though it may be a reliable, objective indication of food quality.

Sensory methods may be used to determine:
*Whether foods differ in taste, odor, juiciness, tenderness, texture and so on.
*To what extend food differ
*To ascertain consumer preferences and to determine whether a certain food is acceptable to a specific consumer group.

Three types of sensory testing are commonly used, each with different goal.

Discrimination or difference tests are design to determine whether there is a difference between products, descriptive tests determine the extent of difference in specific sensory characteristics and affective or acceptance/preference tests determine how well the products are liked or which products are preferred.

There are important differences between these types of tests. It is important to select the appropriate type of test so that the results obtained are able to answer the question being asked about the products and are useful to the manufacturer or product developer.

The appropriate tests must be used under suitable conditions in order for results to be interpreted correctly.

All testing must be carried out under controlled conditions, with controlled lighting, sound (no noise), and temperature to minimize distractions and other adverse psychological factors.
Sensory Testing

Food Spoilage and Physical Factors

2009-09-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Food Spoilage and Physical Factors
Food spoilage can also be caused by physical factors, such as temperature, moisture and pressure acting upon the foods.

Moisture and heat can also produce hydrolytic rancidity in fats; in this case, fats are split into free fatty acids, which may cause off odors and rancid flavors in fats and oils.

Excessive heat denatures proteins, breaks emulsions, removes moisture from food and destroys nutrients such as vitamins.

However, excessive coldness, such as freezing, also discolors fruits and vegetable, changes their texture and/or cracks their outer coatings to permit contamination by organisms.

Food under pressure will be squeezed and transformed into unnatural conformation.

The compression will likely break up the surface structure, release degradative enzymes, and expose the damage food to exterior microbial contamination.

Many health officials consider physical factors to include such things as sand, glass, wood chips, rat hair, animal urine, bird droppings, insect parts and so on. These things may not spoil the food, but they do present hazards.

Some these foreign substances do lead to spoilage.

Furthermore, insects and rodents can consume and damage stores foods and insect can lay eggs and leave larvae in the foods, causing further damage later.

Such foods are no longer reliable since they contain hidden contaminants.

The attacks of the by insect and rodents can also contaminate foods further with microbial infections.
Food Spoilage and Physical Factors

Sanitary Food Handling – Facilities

2009-09-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Sanitary Food Handling – Facilities
Hygienic food handling requires appropriate equipment and supplies.

Food handling and food processing equipment should be constructed according to regulations of the appropriate regulatory agency.

Welfare facilities should be clean, neat, well lighted and conveniently located away from production areas.

Restrooms should have self-closing doors. It is also preferred that hand washing stations have foot – or knee-operated faucets that supply water at 43 degree C to 50 degree C.

Remotely operated liquid soap dispensers are recommended because bars and soap can increase the transfer of microorganisms.

Disposable sanitary towels are best for drying hands.

The consumptions of snacks, beverages and other foods, as well as smoking should be confined to a specific area, which should be clean and free of insects and spills.
Sanitary Food Handling – Facilities

Food Adulteration

2009-08-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

Food Adulteration
Food commodities have always been vulnerable to fraudulent admixture or adulteration with cheaper inferior materials.

Such practices are revealed within countries when food materials are transported from the countryside to the urban centers.

In international trade, such practices were noted in the eighteenth century when the UK and other European nations were importing species oils oilseeds, honey, tea, coffee and such materials form their colonies.

Since wide variations in quality were suspected, the customs and excise department in England established analytical laboratories to check the purity of these commodities.

Valuable research work was carried out by these laboratories to investigate the problem of adulteration, to lay down standard specification and to devise analytical methods to detect and quantitate adulteration.

Frederick Accum, German Scientist wrote in 1820 that ‘Indeed it would be difficult to mention a single article of food which is not be met with an adulterated state and there are some substances which are scarcely ever to be procured genuine’.

He has cited common cases of adulteration which are revealing. These included black pepper with gravel, leaves, twigs, paper dust, linseed meal, pea flour, sago, rice flour; cayenne pepper with vermillion (mercury sulphide), ochre (earthy mixture of metallic oxides and clay), turmeric; essential oil with oil of turpentine, other oil alcohol; vinegar and lime juice with sulphuric acid; coffee with roasted grains, occasionally roasted carrots or scorched beans and peas, baked horse liver.

A similar situation existed in other countries as well. At times, the adulterants were toxic as in the cases of mercuric sulphide, ochre, sulphuric acid mentioned above or the presence of lead chromate in turmeric and dimethylamino azobenze or butter yellow, a hepatocarcinogen, in butter.

Even now, the situation may not be any better in certain countries. The adulterators are quite innovative although innovative although unscrupulous.
Food Adulteration

Sanitary Food Handling – Role of Employees

2009-07-16T03:25:00.000-07:00

Sanitary Food Handling – Role of Employees
A protective sanitation barrier between food and the sources of contamination should be provided during food handling.

Barriers include hairnets, disposable gloves, mouth guards, sneeze guards and food packaging and containers.

Food processing and foodservice firms should protect their employees and consumers from workers with disease or other microorganisms of public health concern that effect the wholesomeness or sanitary quality of food.

This precaution is important to maintain a good image and sound operating practices consistent with regulatory organizations.

In most communities, local health codes prohibit employees having communicable disease from handling foods or participating in activities that may result in contamination of food or food contact surface.

Responsible employees should exercise caution in selecting employees by screening unhealthy individuals.

Although some areas no longer require health cards because of the expense involved, many local health department require all employees who handle food to be examined by a physician who will issue a health card only to healthy individual.

Selection of employees should be predicted upon these facts:

*Absence of communicable diseases should be verified through a country health card or a physician’s report.

*Applicants should not exhibit evidence of a sanitary hazard such as open sores or presence of excessive ski infections or acne.

*Applicants who display evidence of respiratory problems should not be hired to handle food or to work in food processing or food preparation areas.

*Applicants should be clean and neatly groomed and should wear clothing free or unpleasant odor.

*Applicants should successfully complete a sanitation course and examination such as that provided by National Restaurant Association.

Sanitary Food Handling – Role of Employees

Problems of Chemical Residues

2009-07-05T00:05:00.000-07:00

Problems of Chemical Residues
A variety of chemical have been in use in modern agrohorticultural and animal husbandry practices and these chemicals may remain in the plant crops or animal foods at concentrations that may be hazardous to the consumer.

Thus excess use of inorganic nitrogenous fertilizers in the soil may cause a rise in the level of nitrite or nitrate in the vegetative plant portions especially in the leafy vegetables.

Weedicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides and sprouting inhibitors of diverse chemical nature are used in farm practices and pesticides and fumigants in storage warehouses.

Residues of these compounds or their metabolites may survive in the foods.

Anabolic steroids or their analogues and antibiotics have been used for fattening meat animals and poultry and milk releasing hormones have been used in dairy animals.

Such treatments may leave residues in the flesh or milk. A close monitoring of the residue levels has now become necessary in view of the liberal usage of these treatments.

In many countries, tolerances have been laid down for these chemicals in specific foods.
Problems of Chemical Residues

General Perspectives on Quality and Value

2009-06-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

General Perspectives on Quality and Value
Most foods, especially those based on whole plant and animal tissue, have a highly complex structure and composition.

Chemical, physical and/or microbiological processes take place in foods during storage, which may alter some of these attributes.

Food structure and composition translate into sensory attributes and other performance aspects for the consumer.

What all this means is that, theoretically at least, hundreds of different attributes could be defined for individual foods.

Clearly, to specify food quality in those terms is impractical; more impracticably, it is inappropriate because quality does not refer to the totality of attributes a product possesses.

Instead, the quality concept introduces a filtering device through which attributes are weighted in terms of their contributions to user satisfaction with the product.

Therefore, the definition of product quality incorporates subjective elements.

Customer satisfaction means the customer’s perception of requirements having been fulfilled. Other models of quality include, in addition, the requirements of the other stakeholders in a process or product.

The value and the satisfaction consumers derive from a food product is therefore closely related to its quality.

In fact, both terms appear throughout the academic literature, although their use by different authors is not consistent.
General Perspectives on Quality and Value

Food Contaminants

2009-05-28T04:49:00.000-07:00

Food Contaminants
During their journey from farm to consumer food commodities are likely to be exposed to a multitude of hazards that may lead to contamination by dust, dirt weeds, mechanical injury, physicochemical changes accelerated by heat, light, metal ions, contamination or spoilage due to microorganisms insects and rodents or biochemical changes brought about by enzymes that may be endogenous or contributed by the invading biological agents.

Food commodities are thus likely to undergo significant alteration. Even though the consumer reference is undoubtedly for farm fresh foods and farmers and traders have been striving to keep up farm fresh image of food commodities, the question remains how fresh?

Amongst food grains particularly oilseeds, which are seeds high in essential oils, the entry of weed seeds at harvest, especially if harvesting is mechanical, is a serious contamination of the weed seeds harbor toxicants like Crotolaria, Datura and Argemone for instance.

Not only fruits and vegetables but even seeds may undergo mechanical damage. In the case of high moisture commodities, this will most likely be followed by microbial infections and spoilage.

In fat rich commodities such as oilseeds and nuts, oxidative chemical changes are most likely to be catalyzed by exposure to air, elevated temperature, humidity, light and metal salt contaminants leading to rancidity.

Such oxidative reactions affect essential oils and oil bearing material adversely.

Microbial spoilage of foods and health hazards to consumers through bacterial and fungal toxins and enteric disease are especially associated with high moisture foods, animal foods in particular.
Moisture pick-up or loss depending on the relative humidity (RH) is another change that significantly affects the quality.

Many foods undergo staling on storage: bread and coffee are good examples. In many countries, where feasible, specifications have been laid down for food commodities indicating the tolerances with respect to changes to their quality.
Food Contaminants

Recognition of Food Safety and Food Quality

2009-05-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

Recognition of Food Safety and Food Quality
The international recognition of systems for safety and for food quality management has resulted in the need to adopt terminology that can be interpreted in a uniform and consistent manner.

The systems for food safety and for quality management that have been adopted by international organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have been based on fundamental principles developed by recognized experts or recognized scientific or professional organizations.

As a result, there is now standardized vocabulary in the field of food quality assurance.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme.

The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

International Organization for Standardization ISO is the world largest standards developing organization.

Between 1947 and the present day, ISO has published more than 17500 International Standards, ranging from standards for activities such as agriculture and construction, through mechanical engineering, to medical devices, to the newest information technology developments.
Recognition of Food Safety and Food Quality

Requirements for Hygienic Practices

2009-04-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

Requirements for Hygienic Practices
Management must establish a protocol to ensure hygienic practices by employees.

Supervisors and managers should set an example for employees by their own high levels of hygienic and food health while conveying the importance of these practices to the employees.

They should provide proper laundry facilities for maintenance of cleanliness though clean dressing rooms, services m, and welfare facilities.

Management should require employees to have a pre-employment physical examination to verify that they are in good physical, mental and emotional health.

This is an excellent opportunity to impress the important of good hygienic habits on a new employee and to emphasize how employees “shed” Salmonella and Shigella.

Furthermore, those with skin infections may be identified before they handle food. All employees who work with food should be checked regularly for signs of illness, infection and other unhealthy conditions.

Several countries have a legal requirement for pre employment health examinations and require than they be repeated at regularly intervals.

However, this regulation has been challenged because of the expense of routine medical examinations, the difficulty of administering these plans, and because a clear relationship between food handlers and food disease has not been established.
Requirements for Hygienic Practices

Food Safety and Consumers

2009-02-23T18:03:00.001-08:00

Food Safety and Consumers
Food safety is of paramount importance both for suppliers and consumers of food.

Food safety assurance is therefore the primary objective for all quality assurance schemes, both statutory and voluntary consuming considerable company resources.

The Food Safety Act is designed to protect consumers from unsafe food as well as from food fraud, but food safety and other food standards cannot be separated completely.

Mislabeled products can constitute safety hazards as in the case of sheep’s milk (declared) yoghurt containing a proportion of (undeclared) cow’s milk. This may threaten the life of a consumer with a serious cow’s milk allergy.

Generally, in the eyes of consumers, food safety is an implicit quality attribute, i.e. they would not specifically demand “safe” food in shop or restaurant.

However, where a consumer does not have trust in their supplier, they will try to take charge of food safety, safety assurance themselves.

A customer at a butcher’s may decide not to purchase cooked meats there, e.g., if the shop fails to demonstrate effective procedures for the prevention of cross contamination of those meats via raw meats.

Aspects of food quality besides safety are largely determined by individual preferences. The range and diversity of foods available to consumers today is considerable.

In fact, there are few foods that cannot be obtained by the individual with the time and money to pursue and acquire them.

This means in principle, each consumer can be matched with his or her ideal foods. Whilst most would not go to such lengths, most people have their own individual mental lists of products that they would avoid under all circumstances.

As far as individual supermarkets are concerned, some might question exactly what level of product differentiation there really is.

On the other hand, it may be difficult for consumers with strongly held ethical values to choose food accordingly, e.g., meat from what they would perceive as cruelty-free production systems.

In this case, the difficulty lies with the poor state of the consumer information and advice systems that exist in the food area, and with the associated issue of food labeling.
Food Safety and Consumers

Total Quality Management

2009-01-30T23:18:00.000-08:00

The Role of Total Quality Management
An effective sanitation program is a segment of total quality management (TQM), which must be applied to all aspects of the operations within an organization.

Total quality management applies the “right first time” approach. The most critical aspect of TQM is food safety. Thus sanitation is an important segment of TQM.

The successful implementation of TQM requires that management and production workers be motivated to improve product acceptability.

Furthermore, all involved must understand the TQM concept and possess skills to maker the program successful.

Quality Assurance for Effective Sanitation
Quality is the degree of acceptability. Component characteristics of quality are both measurable and controllable.

A sanitation Quality Assurance program can achieve the following goals:

Identify raw material suppliers that provide a consistent and wholesome product
Make possible stricter sanitary procedures in processing to achieve a safer product, within given tolerances
Segregate raw materials on the basis of microbial quality to allow the greatest value at the lowest price.

By tradition, the food industry has applied quality assurance principles to ensure effective sanitation practices, among them, inspection of the production area and equipment for cleanliness.

If evidence of poor cleanup is reported, necessary action is taken to correct the problem.

More sophisticated operations frequently incorporate use of a daily sanitation survey with appropriate checks and forms. Visual inspection should include more than a superficial examination, because a film buildup that can harbor spoilage and food poisoning microorganisms can occur on equipment.
Total Quality Management

Food, Quality, Value and Consumer

2009-01-13T04:36:00.000-08:00

Food, Quality, Value and Consumer
Conceptually, “quality” and “value” lie at the interface between the consumers mind processes and the object of the external world. Both are concerned with a consumer and an object and with interaction taking place between them.

Food value is slanted more towards the consumer and food quality towards the food, but there is an overlap. This interface, although critical is only one of several that are relevant to an understanding of consumer behavior in the area of food quality.

“Value” and the associated concept of “value”, and “consumer behavior” draw on several academic disciplines, both in the social and the natural sciences, for their theoretical underpinnings; yet there is no unified view of food quality and the consumer.

In fact, there is often a distinct lack of understanding, which tends to prevent effective communication between food professionals raised in the different academic traditions, and which can lead to difficulties in the business environment.

Food companies must understand the mental process that will cause consumers to develop perception of the finished products. Such perceptions engage with consumers’ motivational systems and therefore directly affect choices and other food related behavior.

As for marketing and communication strategies for novel foods and technologies, it is crucial that proper account is taken of the beliefs and attitudes of both consumers and the wider community.

Consumers are the final link of food supply chains, i.e., they are the end users. This does not mean that, in each case, the food shopper is the person who will consumes the food in the sense of eating it. For example, foods may be bought for other family or household members and as gifts.
Food, Quality, Value and Consumer

Food Contamination

2008-12-23T17:47:00.000-08:00

Food Contamination
Because the same nutrients in foods are also the same nutrients microbes need for their growth, food spoilage is inevitable. However, most infectious agents do not multiply on foods, but use them as a vector to gain entrance to the human body.

Food Poisoning results from many sources. Some of them include the following: Bacillus cereus, Campylobacter jejuni, Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and Yersinia enterocolitica. Infection from them usually causes the same basic symptoms of acute gastroenteritis, abdominal discomfort and pain, and diarrhea, but symptoms vary -- from mild gastric distress to death -- depending on the type of bacterial infection. Transmission is usually passed via the fecal/oral route with the ingestion of the pathogen on contaminated food.

Foodborne diseases affects roughly seventy-six million people each year in the US, which is more common and deadlier than bacterial meningitis, toxic shock syndrome, and the flesh-eating strep combined. Typical bacteria that cause most of the epidemics include Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Shigella. More recently, such mutant strains as Escherichia coli 0157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Cyclospora cayetanensis, and caliciviruses are becoming more commonplace.

Water contamination is usually because of the presence of three bacteria and are indicators of fecal contamination -- E. coli, Clostridium perfringens, and enterococci. In the case of water contamination by Klebsiella pneumoniae, it should not be assumed that the contamination came from a fecal source. The bacterium is also found in soil and runoff can contaminate water.

Meat held at room temperature often invites bacteria from the family Enterobacteriaceae. This also happens with strains of Staphylococci, micrococci, and aerobic Gram-positive spore-forming bacilli. Refrigeration suppresses these microbes, but can allow the growth of such other organisms as pseudomonas. Eating raw meats, fish, and milk is becoming more of a hazard and should be avoided. Suspect, too, are salads prepared in restaurants where meats and vegetables share a common surface during preparation.

Color can often indicate the type of microbe involved in the spoilage:

Black spots on meat are the result of Cladosporium species.
White spots are from Sporotrichum carnis.
Yellow or green spots form as a result of the Penicillium species.
A rainbow effect, often seen on bacon and fish, is caused by a spoilage bacteria known as Photobacteria that can break down ATP to produce visible light. After a couple of days, this bacterium can grow sufficiently to enable raw fish to glow in the dark!

Spoiled milk, as opposed to fermented products, is caused by such capsulated organisms as Lactococcus cremoris or Enterobacter aerogenes, leaving the milk to form unpleasant strands. Various strains of clostridium can also cause milk to spoil. Contaminated ice cream in Minnesota in 1994 caused an estimated quarter of a million people to become ill. Despite this, it took a full three months before the Salmonella-type bacterium was tracked down and appropriate action taken. This is not an inspiring record designed to instill confidence in the public health system. On the other hand, when a contaminant is suspected, much food is wasted in an effort to track down a few questionable samples.

Stores of rotten black potatoes that turn into an oozing mess are the result of an Erwinia contamination.

A liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, can be contracted by humans, mainly from eating watercress harvested from beds where infected snails live.

Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive bacillus capable of growing at temperatures of 0°C (32°F) and lower. It is relatively heat-resistant, having been isolated from pasteurized products. Another reason for it being an easy microbe to be passed on is its ability to remain on the hands for long periods of time -- at least eight hours -- and is not easily removed by conventional handwashing.

Foods associated with this microbe are soft cheeses, pates, and raw vegetable dishes. Pre-cut foods are most at risk for developing listeria contamination. Most people remain relatively unaffected, except for pregnant women and newborns, where often fatal cases of meningitis and/or septicemia develop.

Almost half of all food poisonings in Japan are caused by Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a marine bacterium found off the coast there, as well as in America and southwest England. Almost all food poisonings have been the result of undercooked fish. Such was the case in an air flight from Hong Kong to the UK, where lobster salad was served. Fortunately, the new crew, picked up in India enroute, did not eat any of the salad as all others aboard were ill by the time the flight ended. Obviously, the incubation period is relatively short -- the time it took to fly from Hong Kong to the UK.
Food Contamination

Quality Characteristics of Raw Milk

2008-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

Quality Characteristics of Raw Milk
Good raw milk quality is the basis for the production of high quality dairy products. The raw milk quality is controlled by the following characteristics:

Level of nutrient and reagents

Chemical physical characteristics

Level of total plate count and composition of the flora, e.g. level of spore formers, coliform, psychotrophs and thermosresistant microorganisms in the total plate count as well as level of somatic cells (cell count)

Presence or absence of pathogenic organisms such as those that cause tuberculosis, brucellosis or mastitis

Presence or absence of disease such as pus particles or toxins

Presence or absence of deleterious substances such as inhibitors or other foreign substances

Taste and flavor

Cleanliness of milk

Quality Characteristics of Raw Milk

Aromatic profile

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Aromatic profile
Much have been published on the history, nature and processing of herbs, species and other aromatic plant materials used as food flavorings but one subject which has received little attention is that their sensory characteristics.

What do they actually smell and taste like? What quantitative and qualitative contribution can one expect them to give to the total flavor complex of any product which they are used? How can one describe the observable differences in aroma and flavor? The absence of any really informative articles covering this important aspect of flavoring is not surprising when one realizes how extremely difficult it is to achieve meaningful descriptions or well known but purely sensory effects (for example flavor of banana).

Certain descriptive terms have become well established by use and understood by the majority of these like to be called upon to evaluate aromatic materials, generally, however, the mere reading of a descriptive profile gives little idea of the effect obtained. It is fair to say that no color-of flavor can yet be describe verbally in any language in such a way that the uninitiated layman immediately recognize and visualize the material and be able to identify it when presented with a sample.

Even the individual words used do not necessarily convey the correct impression. For instance, one may have a reasonably clear understanding of the word “aromatic” as something which has both a hedonic and nonhedonic connotations; i.e., it is both pleasing and sweet. In the other hand, the term “green’” which are also very frequently used in describing aromas and flavors, is far less precise, ranging from the effect one associates with freshly cut grass to that of damp leaves or even of freshly cut garden herbs; all of which are quite different.

This problem is accentuated when one has to translate terms into other languages. Frequently, a single world replacement is not understood may, in fact, give totally wrong impression. In most cases one has to carry out an evaluation at first hand in order to appreciate fully the differences in aromatic character or create a picture of the total profile.

Aromatic profile

What are allergens?

2008-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

What are allergens?
Allergens are substances that cause the immune system to trigger and act against itself. Normally, this condition happens when foreign bodies such as bacteria enter the human body. However, innocent and harmless bodies (proteins) such as pollen, peanuts, milk, penicillin may not be recognized by the immune system and continue to function as a harmful foreign body. Yet, wasps and other insects produce allergens as a defense mechanism.

A food allergy is triggered when natural substance is mistaken for a hostile invader, causing immune systems to mobilize to repel the invader. F00d allergies are mediated by IgE antibodies to protein-a characteristic shared with other allergens such as those present in hay fever (an acute allergic nasal condition) an wasp-sting reactions. The severity of food allergy symptoms varies from life threatening reactions when exposed to food proteins that are allergens to which they are sensitized, to less severe reactions such as skin irritation and breathing difficulties. Since no cure is available for food allergies. Avoidance is the only preventive measure available to allergic consumers.
What are allergens?

What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?

2008-11-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?
The word fresh in the marketing of foodstuff has become something of a mantra in the past decade. However what the manufacturer and retailer mean by fresh and what the consumer understands are sometimes very different. We understand that the fresh bread has been baked within the last 48 hrs and fresh milk came from the cow within a similar period of time. So can fruit juice (the raw material could be weeks old), just because it has been pasteurized and required chill chain distribution be justifiable called ‘fresh’? Also, ‘fresh’ fruit juice could have 30 day best before life: is it still ‘fresh’ after 30 days? ‘Fresh’ fruit and vegetables could be several days old at the point of sale.

‘Fresh’ has three connotations to the consumer: the first is a about how recently it was derived from its source, the second is about minimal processing and the third about its eating quality. Pasteurized milk could be less than 24 hrs from the cow when place on sale. UHT milk when processed is no older than pasteurized milk but no one would describe UHT milk, even on the day of processing, as fresh. In a supermarket, fresh fish means raw fish: it was probably caught several days ago and has been frozen.

The consumer does not experience age of product or type of process: the consumer will buy fresh foods on the basis of a superior eating quality, often expect to pay a premium and accept a short shelf life. For the industry to offer both better value and greater convenience in the fresh foods market, we need to better understand that the consumer experiences as fresh food and how they discriminate ‘fresh’ from ‘processed’ foods. It is better be able to offer the fresh foods eating experience that is both good value and convenient.
What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?

Quality Assurance and Sanitation Programs in Food Industry

2008-11-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

Quality Assurance and Sanitation Programs in Food Industry
Since the late 1970s, the food industry has emphasized an organized sanitation program that monitors the microbiology of raw ingredients in production plants and the wholesomeness and safety of the finished products, in an effort to maintain or upgrade the acceptability of its food products.

As consumers become better informed and more sophisticated, it is even more vital for the food industry to develop an effective quality assurance (QA) and sanitation program. The efforts of regulatory agencies in the field of sanitation and food microbiology have been responsible for the food industry’s implementation of voluntary quality assurance programs. Food scientists have also had a positive impact on quality assurance programs because many of these professionals have joined various companies in the food industry. Their efforts have been instrumental in the adoption and/or upgrading of quality assurance programs for the organizations they represent.

In its initial stages, quality assurance was primarily a quality control function, acting as an arm of manufacturing. It has now evolved to formidable force within executive structure of large food firms and has emerged into broad spectrum of activities. A quality assurance program provides the avenue to establish checks and balances in the areas of food safety, public health, technical expertise, and legal matters affecting food manufacturing firms. Activities related to food sanitation include sanitation inspections, products releases and holds, packaging sanitation, and product recalls and withdrawals.

A quality assurance program that emphasizes sanitation is vital to the growth of a food establishment. If foods are to compete effectively in the market place, established hygienic standards must be strictly maintained. However, it is sometimes impractical for production personnel to measure and monitor sanitation while maintaining a high level of productivity and efficiency. Thus, an effective quality assurance program should be available to monitor, within established priorities, each phase of the operation. All personnel should incorporate the team concept to attain established sanitary standard, ensuring that food products in the market place are safe.
Quality Assurance and Sanitation Programs in Food Industry

Raw Materials for the Markets

2008-10-22T21:50:00.001-07:00

Raw Materials for the Markets
Both conventional breeding and more particularly the promise of direct genetic modification of genotype offer the potential for changing the marketing dynamic of fresh produce, milk and meat.

Fruit and vegetables marketed to the consumer are still predominantly producer led; what is offered is what can be grown. Quality criteria reflect, not what is desired but the limits within which a product is acceptable or tolerated. By using advanced breeding techniques the food industry would want the potential to match a fruit or vegetable to the consumers’ preference and the consumers’ mode of using the product. This would be true of fresh produce for manufacture, too. The dream is to be able to specify the ideal quality criteria of a fruit or vegetable and know that a grower is able to match the characteristics accurately and consistently. The desirable characteristics would include flavor, sweetness, texture, nutrient content and durability in storage. No doubt the growers would want to specify such characteristics as yield drought tolerance, insect resistance and ease of harvest.

Similar scenarios can be imagined for milk and meat. As the market demand for butter fat, casein and whey protein moves, one or other component is in surplus, another is dearth. Although some changes in gross composition have been achieved through conventional breeding and feed regimes, could milk composition be more closely tailored to market demand by a better understanding of feed conversion or by altering the genotype?

In the livestock market, the demands for the different cuts of meat must be managed. Chickens yield a fairly steady ration of leg to wing to breast meat. However, the market does not necessarily reflect this balance. Beef muscle is selected from different parts of the animal according to the desire for leanness, tenderness and flavor, but the market for hind and fore quarter does not necessarily reflect the fat that for every forequarter there is exactly one hindquarter.
Raw Materials for the Markets

Pest Control of Fruits and Vegetables

2008-10-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

Pest Control of Fruits and Vegetables
Insects, rodents, plant disease, and weeds can devastate food crops, and human history is filled with famines attributable to these scourges. Large scale agricultural production tends to increase the susceptibility of crops to these hazards. Pesticides are currently an integral component of an agricultural system that produces increased yields of fresh fruits and vegetables with good visual quality. Pesticides have become a major cost of production of fruit and vegetable farmers. The use of pesticides is associated with risks of increase pest resistance, environmental contamination, exposure to farm workers, and escalating costs. With mounting regulatory pressure on pesticides it is likely that fewer compounds will be available to the farmer and that these compounds will be available for only a few crops of high economic value.

Damage to fruits and vegetables by pests is not limited to loss of visual quality. Insects and rodents can inoculate plants in the field with microorganisms that can present a health hazard, particularly if the product is not properly washed and is eaten raw. These dangers are compounded if untreated animal wastes such as manure, a potent source of human pathogens, are used for fertilization, particularly with vegetables grown close to the ground. Mold, which can be held in check by fungicide, can infect fruits and vegetables products. Mycotoxins produced by molds, such as patulin in apple products and ochratoxin in citrus fruits, present additional concern. The potential danger of these naturally occurring mycotoxins has been documented but the practical implications of decreased fungicide use are not clear.
Pest Control of Fruits and Vegetables

Loss of Quality

2008-09-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

Loss of Quality
Just as important as selecting for food quality is the prevention of the loss of quality. The most pervasive problems are probably control of staling and prevention of moisture migration.

Staling as a process is well understood and much progress has been made in understanding how to delay the staling process in wheat flours. However, cooked rice stales and becomes hard within 24 hrs of cooking; arresting the staling process would allow cooked rice of good quality and practicable shelf life to be offered. Much remains to be understood to control staling so that it can either be stopped when it has reached as desired level or completely inhibited.

Moisture migration limits the shelf life of many products where a high moisture region is in contact with a low moisture region. The manufacturer is unable to give consumer the experience of a fresh baked product. The pastry is designed to be hard and brittle to contrast with the moist and malleable meat content. Around the meat, a high moisture jelly is injected after baking. Within a few days, moisture migrates from the jelly into the pastry and the case becomes soft, losing flavor and texture contrast with the filling.
Loss of Quality

Food Quality and Manufacturing

2008-09-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Food Quality and Manufacturing
The quality of a consumer product has two very different components. The manufacturer may believe that he is increasing the quality of a product by adding more meat to a meat pie or using fresh not frozen vegetable in formulating a quiche. However is the consumer able to discriminate between standard and quality improved product and are they motivated by the proposition of such a quality improvement? This is the essence of the challenge when conducting sensory analysis: what are the sensory characteristics which translate into a perception of quality by the consumer that may increase propensity to purchase? Although some work has been done in this area, it is still poorly understood. Ideally what is needed is a framework for product developer that does not need to be continually verified by expensive consumer research.

Along the food chain, manufacturers want to understand how to select raw materials that will impart the desired quality characteristics to the finished product. Although some raw materials characteristics can be linked, there is a general lack of understanding of how subtle differences in raw material can profoundly affect product quality.

Despite decades of research, there is still much to be learnt about impact of subtle changes have an effect is certain but molecular basis for this is far from clear. Understanding what is going on at a molecular level would allow either for a more informed selection of raw material or for an intervention in process that was dependent on the raw material feed quality.
Other examples include understanding what it is that causes milk functionality to change during spring flush. Despite little change in the gross composition, the functionality can change dramatically. Why?

When we tender steak, is there a better way of selecting it other than specifying which cut or measuring a textural characteristic? Is there a biochemical marker that translates into tenderness? Can we have meat that is both tender and flavorsome?
Food Quality and Manufacturing

Environment for Sensory Evaluation

2008-09-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

Environment for Sensory Evaluation
One of the most important activities in any laboratory in the sensory assessment of samples, be they of aromatic chemicals, spices, natural extracts, flavorings or products containing these materials based on his reactions to their smell and flavor.

The methods used are frequently taken for granted as being part of normal experience but there are certain well based precepts that should be followed if the evaluation is to be effective. Perhaps the most important and yet the least observed if these is the need for complete concentration and an absence of distractions. The environment in which sensory judgment is reached is the most important. The essential requirements and optimum layouts of facilities suitable for sensory assessment of a wide variety of raw materials and end products also is the important factor.

Ultimately, the facilities provided depend on the budgetary importance that any company or organizations places on this respect of its technical program. Even if the facilities fall short of the optimum, it is usually possible to ensure that the test conditions are as natural as possible, that the assessor is at ease but not the over comfortable, and is quiet and free from external distractions, other provisions, such as air-conditioning and controllable lighting though desirable, are not strictly essential.

All too frequently, even, these minimum conditions are not available and much evaluation is carried out at the laboratory bench with other normal routines progressing in the immediate vicinity. This sort of environment is far from satisfactory for the making of a considered judgment in sensory attributes particularly where highly flavorful products are involved.
Environment for Sensory Evaluation

Nutritive Value of Fruits and Vegetables: Minerals and Vitamins

2008-09-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

Nutritive Value of Fruits and Vegetables: Minerals and Vitamins
The nutritional advantage of fruits and vegetables is that they offer high concentration of micronutrients for a low expenditure of calories and fat. Virtually every national report of diet and health recommendations, recommend an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption to replace foods higher in calories and fat.

Fruits and vegetables are rich sources of vitamins, particularly A and C. It has been estimated that these crops provide 91% of the vitamin C and 62% of the vitamin A consumed in US alone. It should be noted that the importance if a fruit and vegetable as a source of a nutrient is a function of both the concentration of that nutrient and the amount of that item is consumed. Thus carrots, leafy greens vegetables, and sweet potatoes are good sources of vitamin A by virtue of their high concentration of the nutrient. Likewise, citrus fruits, pepper and tomatoes are good sources of vitamin C because of high concentrations. Potatoes while lower in vitamin C concentration are also good source of the nutrient because of the large amount of potatoes consumed. In addition, certain crops are good sources of folic acid, niacin, thiamin, and vitamin B6.

Fruits and vegetables are relatively high in mineral content, particularly potassium, magnesium, iron and calcium. Unfortunate, the amount of these minerals in plant products is not good indication of their nutritive value. The bioavailability of these micronutrients is more important that the actual concentration and the bioavailability of minerals in fruits and vegetables tend to be low, primarily because of the presence of interfering substance. Bioavailability of nutrients depends on the chemical form of the nutrients and the presence of interfering substance.
Nutritive Value of Fruits and Vegetables: Minerals and Vitamins

Product Recall: Hazard Evaluation and Recall Strategy

2008-08-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Product Recall: Hazard Evaluation and Recall Strategy
Hazard Evaluation
An important step in recall procedure is to evaluate the existing hazard to determine if a recall is warranted. The company or regulatory agency should answer the following:

Has disease or injury already occurred?

Could exposure to humans be a health hazard?

Asses hazard according to population of greatest risk (children, hospital, retirement communities, etc)

Degrees of seriousness if exposed?

Likelihood of occurrence (exposure)?

Consequence of hazard (immediate or long term)?

Classification of recall I, II, III

Recall Strategy
All companies should have a detailed plan to follow should the hazard evaluation warrant a recall. Some critical elements to consider in planning recall strategies are:

The depth of recall (warehouse, wholesale, retails, consumer levels).

Whether or not to issue a public warning, to what signet of the public the warning would be directed, and through what media (general, newspaper, TV, radio or though special groups: doctors, etc.)

Method of recall effectiveness checks to determine how many have received the recall notice.

Product Recall: Hazard Evaluation and Recall Strategy

Damages of fruits and vegetable during storage

2008-08-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

Damages of fruits and vegetable during storage
Certain fruits and vegetables are damaged by storage at refrigerated temperatures. These crops develop a disorder known as chilling injury. Symptoms include failure to ripen (bananas and tomatoes), development of brown sunken areas known as pitting (cucumbers, melons, and organs), increased susceptibility to decay (beans and cucumbers) and off flavor development (tomatoes). In many cases, the evidence of chilling injury does not become apparent until the susceptible item is returned to a typical room temperature.

Although the cellular mechanism for chilling injury is not clear understood, most investigators attribute it to physical changes in the membrane lipids. Prevention of chilling injury is best achieved by not storing the item at refrigerated temperatures. For example, for best quality a banana or tomato should not be stored below 12.5 degrees C, either during distribution or within the home. Such a practice, however, accelerates normal deterioration of the product. Some evidence shows of that intermittent warming or cycling the storage temperature above and below critical chilling temperature for a product will extent its shelf life.
Damages of fruits and vegetable during storage

Product Recall: Policy and Classification

2008-07-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Product Recall: Policy and Classification
Recall Policy
There are basically three types of recall policies

Voluntary recalls are the most common method of effectively removing or correcting consumer products in violation of FDA and USDA regulations.

Recalls may be requested by the regulatory agencies due to the product being harmful, a risk to the public, or out of compliance with food regulations.

Product seizures occur when manufacturers refuse to recall a product or when the recall is ineffective and the violation continues.

Recall Classification

Class I recall is the situation in which there is reasonable probability that the use of, or exposure to, a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequence or death.

Class II recall is the situation in which use of, or exposure to, a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.

Class III recall is the situation in which use of, or exposure to, a violative product is not likely to cause adverse health consequences.

Product Recall: Policy and Classification

Shelf life of a product

2008-07-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

Shelf life of a product
The perception of quality of a product also depends on its form-fresh, frozen, canned or dried. Processing of fruits and vegetables extends the season of a perishable crop. Heat preservation (canning) provides a shelf-stable product, but usually at the cost of color, flavor, and texture. Better sensory quality is obtained in frozen foods but at a cost if increased energy requirement to maintain them, in a frozen state. Dried fruit products such as raisins and prunes offer very different attributes than their fresh counterparts. The consumer judges canned products with a different set of criteria than frozen or fresh items of the same commodity.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are perishable, i.e., they have limited shelf life. They are living, respiring tissue that is also senescing and dying. Certain fruits such as bananas and tomatoes will ripen after harvest, developing desirable color, texture, and flavor during handling and storage. All other fruits and vegetables such as oranges, grapes, cucumbers, and carrots will show little or no improvement in quality within the postharvest system.

Packing and handling systems have been developed to move the product from farm to consumer expeditiously to minimize quality degradation. Techniques used to extend shelf life of fresh products include

Lowering the temperature to slow respiration and senescence

Maintaining an optimal relative humidity to slow water loss without accelerating decay

Adding chemical preservatives to halt physiological and microbial losses

Maintaining an optimal gaseous environment to slow respiration and senescence

Longer shelf life can also be obtained by selecting cultivars that are more able to withstand the rigors of the handling system and by harvesting a crop at optimal maturity for storage and handling.
Shelf life of a product

Perception of Quality: Flavor

2008-06-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

Perception of Quality: Flavor
The perception
Flavor like appearance and texture, is a function of chemical composition. Sweet, sour, bitter and astringent are the taste attributes of plant products. Sweetness is a property of organic acids. Glucose, fructose and sucrose predominate on fruits, with a wide variation. Citric acid is the primary acid presenting citrus fruits, while malic and tartaric acids predominate in apples and grapes, respectively. The perception of sweetness or sourness however, is primarily related to the ratio of sugar to acid present, particularly in sweet fruits and their products.

Sugar and acid ratio
Ripening of fruits usually involved the increase of sugars and the decrease of acids. In other crops such as sweet corn, sugars are converted into starch, which is undesirable. Sweetness is not desirable in all fruits and vegetables, however. The total sugar and acid content contributes to the flavor of tomatoes, and the presence of sugars in potatoes leads to objectionable browning in fried products such as chips and French fries. Other chemical compounds in citrus fruits are bitter, while tannins impart astringency.

Flavor Chemistry
Flavor is a combination of taste and aroma. Flavor impart compounds such as nootkatone in grapefruit and benzaldehyde in cherries are complemented by numerous other chemicals to give the distinctive aroma that we associate with a particular fruit and is so difficult to reproduce synthetically. Vegetables tend to have more delicate aromas, some of which are attributed to specific compounds, such as phthalides in celery. And others are metabolites of lipoxygenase. A conversion of compound present in the fresh flavor, e.g., the formation of alkyloxazoles to give the characteristic aroma of French fries potatoes.
Perception of Quality: Flavor

Perception of Quality: Color and Texture

2008-06-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

Perception of Quality: Color and Texture
Color, a primary indicator of maturity of ripeness, is derived from the pigments found in the product. Loss of the green pigment chlorophyll to unmask yellow carotenoids is a desirable part of the ripening process in many fruits, such as peaches and yellow cultivars of apples. A similar yellowing of green vegetables such as broccoli is considered undesirable. Other pigments of important in fruits and vegetables include lycopene, the red pigment in tomatoes and watermelon: the betacyanins, the red and yellow pigments in beets; and the anthocyanins, the reds, blues, and purples of many fruits and vegetables, including apples, blueberries, and red cabbage. Browning on these products is primarily due to an enzymatic reaction that occurs in response to rupture of the cell membranes.

Texture, like appearance, is evaluated in the context of specific expectations. Crispness and crunchiness are expected in fresh apples, carrots, and celery, but softness or tenderness is desired is asparagus, peas, and plums. The texture of plant products is a consequence of cell wall structure and internal pressure within the cells. Products that maintain structure and turgor during handling and storage remain crisp and may contain an abundance of cell-wall biopolymers. Soft fruits undergo an enzymatic degradation of the cell-wall polysaccharides during ripening. In many fruits, such as peaches and tomatoes, the softening is attributed to pectinolytic enzymes, but cellulose may be important in the ripening of avocadoes. Lignin, a complex biopolymer containing phenolics, can accumulate in cell walls and lead to an objectionable woody texture in products such as asparagus. The mushy texture associated with bruises results from the release, upon rupture of cells, of enzymes that degrade cell-wall polysaccharides, primarily pectin.
Perception of Quality: Color and Texture

What is the 10 point Safety Program?

2008-04-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

What is the 10 point Safety Program?
10 point Safety Program is based on one actually in use by a major cereal food company

Point 1.Specifications
Specifications are the means of providing complete descriptions and requirements of ingredients, storage conditions, process and process parameters, packaging and its component, the label, storage, handling and distribution requirements, and instructions to the customer.

Point 2. Safety Analysis
This is the hazard analysis which is properly conducted will determine the hazards in the food system used to produce a particular product. This is the basis for establishing the control points.

Point 3. Purchasing Requirements
All ingredients and equipment should be bought to rigid specifications from approved supplier.

Point 4. Good Manufacturing Practice
The HACCP system incorporates GMPs. This area covers the basic minimum of hygiene, sanitation, and good housekeeping, in receiving, processing, packaging, and shipping areas as well as in employee and public facilities and in the condition of ground and building.

Point 5. Physical Systems Hazard Control
This is a schematic of the actual flow of the product in production which delineates the equipment used, the piping, and the interrelationship of accessory equipment such as storage tanks.

Point 6. Recall System
Products should be coded and invoices handled in such that all products can be traced through the distributor system. The lots of ingredients used in any production code should be recorded.

Point 7. Contract Manufacturing
Contract manufacturing must be adhere to the same requirements the contracting company requires of it’s plant, including implementation of HACCP.

Point 8. Facilities Auditing
All facilities must be audited on a periodic basis to ensure that they are operating to company standards and that all of the CCPs are being monitored as required, with all deviations and dispositions of deviations recorded.

Point 9. Customer Complaints
Customer complaint often relegated to a consumer response group must be monitored by the chairman of the review committee and the review committee and the QA managers of affected business on regular basis.

Point 10. Incident Reporting
All deviations form the normal operations must be reported on a prearranged plan to selected people. Incident may range from a plant inspection by the government to a deviation in a CCP. It is not always possible for plant people to appreciate the enormity of a problem that might occur. It also allows the review committee to have an overall view of how well the operations are functioning depending on the incident rate.
What is the 10 point Safety Program?

Contrasting Quality Assurance and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system

2008-04-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Contrasting Quality Assurance and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system
Most company that start Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program are pleasantly surprised to find many of the control programs already in place can, with modification, be utilize directly. However, there are major differences between a conventional quality assurance (QA) system and HACCP as it is now conceived in term of seven principles.

Quality Assurance. Most Quality Assurance programs are designed to discover rather than prevent problems. Little detailed information is collected on line to be used fro analysis. Verification procedures the system are not generally used other than testing the end product, and very few QA system include detailed instructions on what to do if product is out f specifications.

HACCP. HACCP systems are based on the prevention of problems rather than discovery after the fact. Each comprises a highly structured and disciplined approach to control, which depends on accurate information and data collection. Appropriate data and other information that the QA programs have will be used, however. The effective way to bring the two together is to start with their similarities and common approaches.

In converting from conventional QA to HACCP, it is generally no necessary to add personal to the program. The major effect of HACCP is to:

*Focus the control effort on the important issues

*Delegate responsibility

*Enforce documentation and action Under HACCP programs every one is responsible for control, not just the QA system and its personnel.
Contrasting Quality Assurance and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system

Perception of quality: Appearance

2008-01-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

Perception of quality: Appearance
In one survey of consumer attitudes towards fresh fruits and vegetables, 96% if the respondents cited ripeness and freshness as important selections criteria, while an equal percentage cited “taste”. In addition, 94% indicate d the importance of appearance and conditions, while 66% used nutritive value and 63% used price as a guide. Two factors enters into the purchase decision of fresh produce

1. Competition of different items on display shelf.

2. The acceptability of particular items in reference to a consumer’s standard for that item.

“Taste” nutritive value and expected price level provide differentiation between items. Freshness/ripeness, appearance/condition, and current price are more likely to be factors in evaluating specific items against the standards at the point of purchase.

Appearance factors include size, shape, gloss, color, and absence of defects. Crop production, harvesting and handling conditions affect general product appearance. For many items, a premium is paced on size, with the greater size commanding a higher prize per pound, but oversize items may be associated with objectionable traits such as being too tough, overripe, or inconvenient to handle.

Visual defects may be caused by insects damage, disease of the plant prior to harvest or of the detached organ after harvest, damaged incurred by adverse weather conditions, physiological disorders due to inadequate plant nutrition or improper handling, and mechanical damage incurred during harvesting or handling, resulting in bruising or breaking of the protective peel and rind. When given a choice, most consumers appear to prefer a predictable uniformity in their produce and an absence of defects.
Perception of quality: Appearance

Chemical composition of fruit and vegetable

2007-11-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

Chemical composition of fruit and vegetable
The primary chemical constitution in mist freshly harvested fruits and vegetables are water, which ranges s from low of 65% (fresh weight) in persimmons to a high of 96% in cucumbers. Fruit and vegetables tend to be low in protein and lipids and high in carbohydrates. They are also rich sources of certain micronutrients such as specific vitamins and minerals.

The only major fruits and vegetables with a relatively high lipid content are avocado and the olive, both which contain up to 15% lipid, oilseeds such as cottonseed, palm, peanut, and soybean are not usually considered fruits and vegetables. These lipids primarily occur as components of cell membranes which function to maintain the integrity of cells and theirs organelles, as well as to serve as the staging area for many critical metabolic reactions. The fatty acid components of membrane lipids tend to be relatively unsaturated.
Chemical composition of fruit and vegetable

Virus Transmission via Foods

2007-06-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Virus Transmission via Foods
Viruses have the potential to be a leading cause of foodborne disease. The most recent year for which and statistics on the incidence of foodborne disease in the United States - a virus was a leading cause of reported foodborne illness.

This unprecedented event resulted from two exceptionally large out breaks of food associated Norwalk virus gastroenteritis which took place in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Virus infected food handlers contaminated butter cream cake frosting, which was later spread on pastries, and salads ant catered banquets at level sufficient to result in at least 3,000 illness in the first outbreak and 2,000 in the second, respectively.

No outbreaks this large appear to have occurred in the U.S since; nor it is likely that a virus will be predominant cause of foodborne illness in the future. However, Minnesota reports that gastroenteritis, with salads as preeminent vehicle, continuous to be leading foodborne illness in the state. New York Sate reports a high incidence of foodborne viral gastroenteritis, but the leading vehicle there is shellfish.
Virus Transmission via Foods

Quality of Fruits and Vegetables

2007-04-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

Quality of Fruits and Vegetables
Fruits and vegetables products are the enigma of foods in modern society. Readily available locally in the fresh state on a seasonal basis, the same fresh quality is desired on a year round basis. Purchased and served on a basis of visual appeal, they are criticized for lacked of adequate flavor. Praised as a cornerstone of a nutritious diet, they are condemned as unsafe carriers of pesticide residues. Highly sought for specific attributes, they are susceptible to wide variation in composition as raw agriculture commodities.

Quality has been defined as “the composite of those characteristics that differentiate individual units of a product, and have significance in determining the degree of acceptability by the buyer”. External quality characteristics, those that can be perceived by the senses of sight and touch without ingesting the product, are important in product differentiation, particularly in purchase decision and food preparation.

Internal quality characteristics, those that can perceived by the sense of taste, smell, and touch (mouthfeel), combine with the visual appearance in determine acceptability and presumably decision to repurchase that product.

Other less-tangible characteristics, such as nutritional value, wholesomeness, and safety of a product, which required sophisticated equipment to measure are not readily determined by most consumers, but the perceptions of these attributes by the consumer affect both differentiation and acceptability of the product.
Quality of Fruits and Vegetables

Cadbury Chocolate – Salmonella contamination – the Story

2007-03-03T10:55:00.000-08:00

Cadbury Chocolate – Salmonella contamination – the Story

The source of the Cadbury chocolate Salmonella outbreak is contaminated "crumb," a mixture of sugar, milk and cocoa. This crumb was used to make several Cadbury chocolate products, including Dairy Milk Miniatures and Easter eggs.

Cadbury allegedly knew that the crumb was contaminated with Salmonella back in January but chose not to warn the public or take products off of the market. It was not until 3 people, including 2 children, got Salmonella food poisoning (salmonellosis) from the chocolate that Cadbury recalled the affected chocolate products on June 23. 1 million Cadbury chocolate products were recalled.

According to a story in the Times, Cadbury's Salmonella testing procedures were inadequate, and Cadbury had the false notion that selling chocolate with low levels of Salmonella is acceptable. Even small amounts of

Salmonella can severely sicken people in high-risk groups, including young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems. As one UK food safety official noted, there is no minimum dose for Salmonella.

Chocolate or any other food product with any level of Salmonella contamination should not be sold to consumers.Due to Cadbury's poor testing procedures, failure to promptly disclose information and willingness to sell Salmonella-contaminated chocolate products to consumers (both this year and in a similar situation in 2002), health officials in the UK are testing another 30 Cadbury chocolate products for Salmonella contamination.

Again the Cadbury chocolate Salmonella outbreak is not linked to any chocolate sold in the United States. Checked CDC statistics for Salmonella outbreaks from 1994-2004 (the most recent confirmed statistics published by the CDC). During that time, there was not one Salmonella outbreak in the United States associated with chocolate.
Cadbury Chocolate – Salmonella contamination – the Story

Oats weevil contamination

2007-01-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

Oats weevil contamination
Oats may be infested by the following cereal pests during storage and transport:

granary weevil (Sitophilus granarius)
cadelle beetle (Tenebroides mauretanicus)
rust-red grain beetle (Cryptolestes ferrugineus)
sawtoothed grain beetle (Oryzaephilus surinamensis)
European grain moth (Nemapogon granellus)
Angoumois cereal moth (Sitotroga cerealella)

The chewing damage caused by the cereal pests brings about increased respiration in the cereal (hot spots) and this, associated with the metabolic activity of the pests themselves, promotes evolution of heat and moisture, which in turn provide favorable living conditions for molds and subsequently, at very high moisture levels, for bacterial growth.

Insect infestation may result in self-heating which ultimately gives rise to depreciation and finally total loss.Inadequately cleaned warehouses, holds and containers are generally the root cause of insect infestation.

Cereal is also at risk from rats and mice, which can act as disease vectors and contaminate the cereal.Before loading, holds/containers should be examined by an independent inspector for infestation by pests of any kind and an appropriate certificate obtained.
Oats weevil contamination