Food processing by application of heat: principles of kinetic of food deterioration

Thermal processes stabilize foods, promote its structure tailoring and assure its microbiologic safety. Depending on the severity of the heat treatment and on the objectives to be accomplished, different thermal processes can be defined, ranging from mild forms of heat treatments to severe procedures involving dramatic modifications of product's sensory and nutritional attributes. Mathematical modeling of heat, mass and momentum transport phenomena but also of the degradation kinetics of microorganism, enzymes and quality attributes have to be taken into consideration for process design. On these bases, the quality optimization of thermally processed food products is possible due to the differences in temperature dependence of thermal degradation kinetics of target microorganism and quality attributes: in thermal processing it is indeed possible to combine different time-temperature conditions with the same lethal or structuring effect, but leading to different quality looses