Green Food Processing Techniques

Book excerpt: Green Food Processing Techniques: Preservation, Transformation and Extraction advances the ethics and practical objectives of "Green Food Processing" by offering a critical mass of research on a series of methodological and technological tools in innovative food processing techniques, along with their role in promoting the sustainable food industry. These techniques (such as microwave, ultrasound, pulse electric field, instant controlled pressure drop, supercritical fluid processing, extrusion...) lie on the frontier of food processing, food chemistry, and food microbiology, and are thus presented with tools to make preservation, transformation and extraction greener. The Food Industry constantly needs to reshape and innovate itself in order to achieve the social, financial and environmental demands of the 21st century. Green Food Processing can respond to these challenges by enhancing shelf life and the nutritional quality of food products, while at the same time reducing energy use and unit operations for processing, eliminating wastes and byproducts, reducing water use in harvesting, washing and processing, and using naturally derived ingredients. - Introduces the strategic concept of Green Food Processing to meet the challenges of the future of the food industry - Presents innovative techniques for green food processing that can be used in academia, and in industry in R&D and processing - Brings a multidisciplinary approach, with significant contributions from eminent scientists who are actively working on Green Food Processing techniques