Performance of a non-invasive methodology for assessing oxygen diffusion in liquid and solid food products

Based on the measurement of local oxygen partial pressure kinetic, a non-invasive methodology was proposed to assess O2 diffusivity ( D O 2 ) in liquid, viscous and solid matrices. This new method was compared with a previous invasive method, developed by the same group, based on the same principle. The new method has proven to be essential to measure D O 2 in solid food matrices where invasive methods usually failed. It was successfully used to obtain D O 2 of cooked ham and processed cheese which were found respectively equal to 0.450 ± 0.004 × 10−9 m2·s−1 and 1.15 ± 0.11 × 10−9 m2·s−1 at 20 °C. D O 2 was also evaluated as a function of temperature (from 5 to 30 °C) and viscosity in lipid-based matrices. These results have permitted to determine activation energy of the diffusion and have revealed that increasing viscosity of the lipid matrices tested did not impact their D O 2 values