Food processing

I was having a class which is about the food processing which is defined as a set of methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food for consumption by human and animals. Generally, food can be categorized into fruit, vegetables, meats, cereals and dairy. The type of processing is mainly depend of the physical and chemical composition. Water activity and acidity are important of food composition. Water activity is d the level of available of water in the food and it is so called free water. Acidity refers to pH value or the level of hydrogen ions. There are many types of processing such as chopping, mincing, proofing, heating and others. I would like to share some knowledge about thermal processing here. Some terminologies such as commercially sterilize and pasteurization is frequently used in food industry. Commercially sterilization is difined as the heat treatment above 100°C applied to food to destroy both the vegetative and the spores of microorganisms while still retaining the food’s nutrients. Pasteurization refers to heat treatment below 100°C applied to food to destroy microorganisms of health significance. Blanching also is a heat treatment. It is used as pretreatment where to detroy enzyme activity in fruits and vegetables. It is effectively reducing the quality loos during processing of fruits and vegetables. Examples of factors influence effectiveness of blanching are type of foods, size of food, temperature and method of heating.