FOOD QUALITY

Food Processing Technology

Dr Hii Ching Lik

Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering

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 Introduction
• Consumers perceive quality by visual appeal,
taste, reading food labels etc.
• Major changes in qualities occur in food during
and after processing
• Important food quality attributes:
Physical

Biological Chemical
food quality
attributes
Food quality vs food
properties?
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Sensory Nutritional
 Physical (Colour)
• Visual appeal, attractive colour etc.
• Food colour can be produced during processing
– Baking, roasting, drying etc…
• Or can be destroyed by processing
– Drying, canning, burnt food etc…
• Changes in colour can be due to colour pigments
or chemical reactions

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 Pigments Reactions
• Chlorophylls • Non-enzymatic browning
– Green to yellow/red – Millard reaction (reducing
• Carotenoids sugars and amino acids)
– Formation of brown/black
– Oxidized from orange to yellow
pigments
• Anthocyanins
• Enzymatic browning
– Red (acidic), blue (less acidic)
– Phenolics compounds
• Betalaines – Formation of brown/black
– Purple/red to brown polymers

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 • High value of hue angle indicates
• Colour measurement: less browning.
• Chroma is a measurement of the
strength of colour such as the
intensity or saturation.

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 Physical (Texture)
• Texture not only influences visual appeal but
also mouth feel
– Extreme shrinkage, visually not attractive and
usually hard in texture
– Due to collapse in the food microstructure

SEM images (350×) of cabbage surface during drying at 60 °C

Before After
drying drying 7
• Some adjustment in process parameters can improve
food texture (and sometimes colour)

Air dried banana chips Freeze dried banana chips

• However, sometimes a higher degree of shrinkage is
desirable in some products

Mushroom Dried shrimp Abalone 8

• Texture Profile Analysis (TPA)

• Cohesiveness: the strength of the internal bonds

making up the body of the product
• Adhesiveness: the work necessary to overcome
the attractive forces between the surface of food
and surface of other materials with which the Compression test
food comes in contact (tongue, teeth etc.) during TPA
• Resilience: how well a product "fights to regain
its original position". 9
 Chemical
• Colour/flavour/odour changes are typically due to
chemical reactions
• Formation of acidic/alcohol products during
processing
– Vinegar/wine processing
• Product spoilage gives undesirable flavour/odour:
– Putrid/urea odour/taste e.g. in over-fermented food
– Fat oxidation (rancidity); O2 level below 1% is effective in
delaying rancidity
• Browning reactions are commonly found in food and
contribute to colour change
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 Enzymatic browning Non-enzymatic browning
• Reactions by enzyme • Maillard reaction
polyphenoloxidase, • Reaction between reducing
• Substrate: Polyphenols sugars and proteins
• Results in formation of • Very complex reactions
brown pigments (melanin) • Final products include flavour
compounds and brown high
• Flavour can be affected e.g. molecular weight pigments
reduction in astringency (melanoidins)
taste • Occurs during
frying/baking/roasting etc.

http://www.food-info.net/uk/colour/enzymaticbrowning.htm http://www.food-info.net/uk/colour/maillard.htm
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 • Enzymatic browning:
From cocoa Polyphenol oxidase

Polyphenol  Oxygen 
 o  Quinone
o  Quinone  Hydroquino ne 
 Melanin  Water
Brown pigment

• Non-enzymatic browning:

Flavour
compounds
/ brown
pigments
Glucose Amino acids

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 Biological
• Microbial growth
on food product
is a critical issue
that cannot be
tolerated
• Food safety is a
mandatory
‘quality’
requirement

http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/whatsnew/whatsnew_act/files/MBGL_RTE%20food_e.pdf 13
 Water in food not bound to food
• Water activity (aw) molecules can support the growth
of bacteria, yeasts and moulds
(fungi) - the term 'water activity'
refers to this unbound water
(source: CSIRO).

Microorganisms aw (critical
range)
Bacteria < 0.85
Yeasts and < 0.6
moulds

In general, aw < 0.6

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• Mycotoxins is recently a major health concern
– Poisonous chemical compounds produced by certain fungi
– Associated with diseased or mouldy crops
– Fungi can invade before harvest (in the field) and after
harvest (during storage)
– Aspergillus and Fusarium species are mycotoxin-producing
field fungi found in tropical developing countries
– The toxins are carcinogenic (aflatoxins = class 1 human
carcinogens)
– The maximum levels for mycotoxins in food are very low
due to their severe toxicity
– Example maximum levels for aflatoxins set by the Codex in
various nuts, grains, dried figs and milk are in the range of
0.5 to 15 µg/kg (a µg is one billionth of a kilogram).
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Mycotoxin Commodity Fungal source(s) Effects of ingestion
Fusarium graminearum Human toxicoses India, China,
deoxynivalenol/nival wheat, maize, barley
Fusarium crookwellense Japan, and Korea. Toxic to animals,
enol reported from
especially pigs
Fusarium culmorum
zearalenone maize, wheat F. graminearum Identified by the International
F. culmorum Agency for Research on Cancer
F. crookwellense (IARC) as a possible human
carcinogen. Affects reproductive
system in female pigs

ochratoxin A barley, wheat, and many Aspergillus ochraceus Suspected by IARC as human
other commodities carcinogen. Carcinogenic in
Penicillium verrucosum
laboratory animals and pigs

fumonisin B1 maize Fusarium moniliforme plus Suspected by IARC as human

several less common species carcinogen. Toxic to pigs and
poultry. Cause of equine
eucoencephalomalacia (ELEM), a
fatal disease of horses
maize, peanuts, and
aflatoxin B1, B2 many other Aspergillus flavus Aflatoxin B1, and naturally
commodities occurring mixtures of aflatoxins,
identified as potent human
carcinogens by IARC. Adverse
aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, effects in various animals,
maize, peanuts Aspergillus parasiticus
G2 especially chickens

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/x5008e/x5008e01.htm 16
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 Nutritional Attributes
• Heat processing is a major cause of changes to
nutritional properties of foods
– Destroys heat-labile vitamin
– Reduces the biological value of proteins (due to
Maillard reactions)
• Oxidation is a second important cause of
nutritional changes in foods
– Exposure to air or due to oxidative enzymes (e.g.
polyphenols)
– Destruction of oxygen-sensitive vitamins
– Lipid oxidation in high fat products
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 Stability of vitamins during processing
A D E K C B complex
Destroyed Increase in Destroyed Very stable Destroyed
by UV & air UV by rancid fat by air,
enzymes,
UV, iron and
copper
Stable to heat, not normally affected by heat treatment Unstable to More stable
heat to heat
Leached out, destroyed by
alkalis, stable in acids

• Degradation kinetics of nutrients:

• dN/dt = -k N (typically first order kinetics)
• k = rate constant (h-1)
• Arrhenius equation:
• k = koexp(-E/RT) 19
 Teh et al. (2015)
Journal of Food Process Eng.

Polyphenols (Cp)

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 Sensory
• Taste/flavour/aroma/texture fall in this category
• Examples of aroma/flavour:
– Caramelization (sweet+burnt taste)
– Maillarad reaction (product specific, e.g. 6-Acetyl-
2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridine = biscuit or cracker-like
flavor present in baked goods like bread, popcorn etc.
– Breakdown of sugars into acids by bacteria during
cocoa fermentation (e.g. acetic acids = sourness)
– Enzyme oxidases consumes polyphenols as substrate
(reduces astringency)
– Conversion of sugars into ethanol by yeast (alcohol) 21
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• Human tongue and the roof of the mouth are
covered with thousands of tiny taste buds

Astringency?

• Sensory evaluation is usually carried out in

product development or consumer research
– It is a method used to “measure, analyze, and
interpret human responses to products as perceived
through their senses”
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Flavour profiling using Spider diagram

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Triangle test: a type of ‘Difference Test’ to determine if
there is a sensory difference between two products.

http://www.ift.org/~/media/Knowledge%20Center/Learn%20Food%20Science/Food%20Science%20Activ
ity%20Guide/activity_trianglesensory.pdf
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• Hedonic scale: 9-point scale (most popular)

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