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. 

Waste management

Increasing in manufacturing sector develop and boost up our economic growth and changed quality and way of our life. However, manufacturing factories produce huge amount of wastes. So, an efficient and effective waste management is necessary to treat the wastes produced.
In some developing countries and Third countries, the waste management standard is still poor, for example
1) Outdated and poor documentation or waste generation rates and composition
2) Inefficient storage and collection of wastes.
3) Disposal of municipal wastes that contains toxic and hazardous material.
4) Dumping of wastes
5) Inefficient use of disposal site space.
There is a hierarchy which lists the way of managing waste problems. It includes avoid creating of waste followed by re-use of waste, recycles waste, recovery energy from waste and lastly is the disposal of waste safety. Best option is the avoiding of create waste and the worst is disposal of waste safety. Principles for achieving good waste management are
1) Polluter pays-person or organization that generates waste shuld pay to manage it.
2) User pays-the costs of the resources needed to create goods and/or services should be included in their price to buyer.
3) Product stewardship-those who produce or import products should do everything possible to minimize the harm to environment caused by producing, using and disposing of the products.

Sustainable development should also be emphasized. It refers development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The dimensions include society, economy and environment.

Waste Classification in Malaysia

Waste can be categorized into two type which is the solid waste and toxic and hazardous waste. Solid waste is the useless and unwanted product which is generated by manufacturing process, activity or by product and is discarded by society. Toxic and hazardous waste is defined as scheduled waste or matter whether in solid, semi solid, liquid, gas or vapor form which is emitted, discharged or deposited in the environment in such volume, composition or manner to cause pollution.
Solid waste can be further categorized into five categories which are waste materials, trade waste, industrial waste, park waste and household waste. Toxic and hazardous waste is scheduled waste which is account into 5 groups which have 77 categories.
The 5 groups of toxic and hazardous wastes are
- Waste that containing metal or metal bearing materiels.
- Waste that are containing inorganic constituents which may contain metals or organic materials.
- Waste that are containing organic constituents which may contain metals and inorganic materials.
- Waste that are inorganic or organic constituents.
- Other waste

Other than above classification, waste can be also divided into 4 types which is municipal, medical, hazardous and industrial wastes. Municipal waste refers to waste generated by the urban. Medical waste included the healthcare by products which are sharp, non-sharp, chemical, blood, human parts and radioactive compounds.

Halal Food

As we know, halal food demand is increasing worldwide. These are due to several factors such as increasing Muslims population which is Islam believer, increased in food expenditure, higher income and more selective in choosing food, change of lifestyle toward halal food and increase or awareness of advantages of halal food.

However, not really people know about halal. Actually halal is referring to permissible based on Syariah perspectives which consider all the food chain. Syariah law is to protect of purity of religion, mind, life, property and good health of future generation and to maintain self respect and integrity.

So, what is halal food? Halal food is food that permitted under Syariah Law and fulfills following conditions such as do not contain parts or product of non-halal animals or human, do not contain najs, not contaminated with najs, slauthering according to Syariah Law, and is safe and not harmful to consume.

There are some principles are related to Halal and Haram. Basically, all things created by god are permitted, with few exception that are specifically prohibited. To make lawful and unlawful is the right of God alone. Basic reason for the prohibition of things is due to impurity and harmfulness. What is permitted is sufficient and what is prohibited is then superfluous. Whatever is conductive to the prohibited is in itself prohibited, falsely representing unlawful as lawful is prohibited and doubtful things should be avoided.

Malaysia is a Halal food hub which means accurate information of halal can be obtained, halal certification system which is trusted by consumers is enforced and it provides services and network of information among all parties involved. 

HACCP

Today I learned about the HACCP which refer to hazard analysis critical control point. There are some benefits of HACCP such as give customer confidence in the safety of the operation , systematic approach to the development of effective controls, can be used at all stages of the food chain, more effective than traditional inspection and testing schemes and internationally accepted. It is complimentary to quality management system. HACCP have seven important principles which are conduct a hazard analysis, identify critical control points, establish critical limits, monitoring, corrective action, recording and ensuring HACCP work as intended. Conduct a hazard analysis is planning to determine the food safety hazard and identify the plan can apply to control these hazards. Then, we determine the critical control point, which usually is a step of process at which control can be applied and food hazard can be prevented. A critical limit is the maximum or minimum value to prevent or eliminate the hazard to an acceptable level. Monitoring is to ensure the process is under control at each critical control point. If deviation occurred, corrective actions have to be taken if a critical limit is not met. All plants have to maintain and records certain documents such as written HACCP plan, hazard analysis and monitoring. Lastly is the validation and verification of HACCP plan.

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Seafood Technology Introduction

Hello, I was having a class about seafood technology and I would like to share here. Actually, aquatic layer can be separate into few layers such as pelagic zone, demersal zone and benthic zone. Each zone has different conditions such as temperature, pressure and light density, thus the habitat and food chain is different between zones. The fish we get from different zones are different in muscle composition and physiology. Fish is a perishable food due to high enzymatic activities and high rate of spoilage. Classifications of fish are mostly based on the fat content, which is fatty, medium and lean fish. Fish is a good source of protein and there are many types of fish product such as smoked fish, canned fish, dried fish, fish hydrolysate, fermented fish, surimi based, frozen processed and value added product which uses ingredients from fish. Smoked fish is a oldest method to treat fish, which uses salt and curing to remove moisture. Smoked method can be in hot or in cold process. Canned fish is involving heat treatment for commercial sterilization and rapid cooling to ambient temperature. Dried method is using heat thermal to reduce or evaporate moisture from fish. Fish hydrolysate is ground up fish carcasses. Fermented fish is using acid or enzymes which ferment fishes. Surimi based is involving deboning, washing, and sweetener and flavor addition, and pressing. This product is used to mimic texture and colour of lobster meat, crab meat or others. Example of frozen processing is like freeze drying which have to consider the formation of ice crystal within fish. Value added product is meaning that some beneficial ingredient from fish such as collagen and gelatin of fish is added to beauty product for some specific purpose.