Food flavor: definition and description

The color, flavor, texture, and the nutritional value of fresh-cut fruit and vegetable products are factors critical to consumer acceptance and the success of these products. Freshness, spiciness, sweetness, and other flavor attributes are critical to our eating pleasure.

Standard flavor designates all the organoleptic properties that are indirectly perceptible by the olfactory organ when tasting. The term flavor denotes a complex set of olfactory and gustatory properties that are perceived when tasting and that can be influenced by tactile, thermal, painful, and even kinaesthetic effects.

Salty and sharp flavors are related to salts, although they have complex flavours that consist of psychological mixtures of sweet, bitter, sharp and salty perception components.

Flavor is typically described by aroma (odor) and taste. Aroma compounds are volatile—they are perceived primarily with the nose, while taste receptors exist in the mouth and are impacted when the food is chewed. While color and appearance may be the initial quality attributes that attract us to a fruit or vegetable product, the flavor may have the largest impact on acceptability and desire to consume it again.

The flavor substances are either volatile or non-volatile. The volatile part contains both taste and odor substances, while the non-volatile part contains taste substances only. The non-volatile substances in food products consist mainly of sugars, fruit acids, amino acids and a number of compounds specific for the material at hand.

The volatile part contains fatty acids, aldehydes, alcohols, esters, amines, and nitrogen and sulfur-containing compounds.

Volatile compounds forming the fruit flavor for example are produced through many metabolic pathways during fruit ripening and postharvest storage, and depend on many factors related to the species, variety, climate, production, maturity, and pre - and postharvest handling.

Food flavor: definition and description

What is the 10 point Safety Program?

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 from 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?