Novel technologies for the thermal processing of foods

Heating is probably the oldest means of processing foods and has been used by mankind for millennia. However, the echnology used to heat foods in order to process them has had a spectacular evolution during the 20th century which has continued until the present time. Technologies such as ohmic heating, dielectric heating (which includes microwave heating and radio frequency heating) and inductive heating have been developed which can replace, at least partially, the traditional heating methods which rely essentially on conductive, convective and radiative heat transfer. They all have a common feature: heat is generated directly inside the food and this has direct implications in terms of both energetic and heating efficiency. Also infrared heating has been developed as a means of heat processing of foods. These are called novel thermal processing technologies, meaning that the change in temperature is the main processing factor, as opposed to the novel non-thermal processing technologies such as pulsed electric fields, high pressure, pulsed light, ultrasound, gamma radiation, among others, where temperature may also change but is not the major responsible for food processing