Keywords: Novel food processing technologies Environmental impact Energy efficiency Water savings

h th technologies. Therefore, many technological developments have been directed towards unit operations ng its equipment and installations, reduction of heat transfer efficiency and thermal damage by overheating, due to the time required to conduct sufficient heat into the thermal centre of foods. Some of these effects are being attenuated through developments on con-trol and monitoring systems for food processing plants, intelligent design of equipments and installations, heat recycling and isolation measures, but this also represents high additional financial costs. Therefore the efforts of processors together with academic circles excessive cooking times and consequently may have direct impli-cations in terms of both energetic and heating efficiency. In the last decade, non-thermal technologies for inactivating microorganisms have also been developed in response to the worldwide interest for more fresh and natural food products. Novel non-thermal technol-ogies such as ultrasounds (US), high pressure processing (HPP) pulsed electric fields (PEF) and pulsed light treatment (PL), among others, have the ability to inactivate microorganisms at near-ambi-ent temperatures, avoiding thermal degradation of the food com-ponents, and consequently preserving the sensory and nutritional quality of the fresh-like food products. Some of the effects of thes