Food Packaging and Preservation

Book excerpt: This book is an updating of Food Packaging and Preservation, Theory and Practice published in 1986 by Elsevier Applied Science. Since that date, many things have changed in the world. Hence the name given to the first IFTEC meeting held at the Hague (NL), November 15-18, 1992 Food Technology for a Changing World. Is the world changing for better or worse and what can food technology improve? The keynote lecture of the IFTEC meeting dealt with hunger and the challenge it represents to food science and technology. In the preface to the 1986 book it was suggested that food packaging could solve some of the problems of crop preservation in countries where starvation is prevalent. However, such thoughts did not solve any problems. The famine is still spreading in Africa. The unbalanced north-south situation evoked in the 1986 preface has not improved. The international market of foods and agricultural products is constantly changing and food packaging scientists can only explore new ways to help cope with this. Some of these ideas are approached in this book, particularly in chapters 9, 10 and 12.