ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overall view of food reaction kinetics. It describes a methodology for modeling reaction rates, and quantifies the effect of important environmental parameters on these rates, using well-known examples of frequent reactions occurring in foods, mostly based on chemical mechanisms. Food spoilage involves chemical reactions, including the reaction or breakdown of intrinsic food components such as proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins, etc. Most of these reactions directly affect major quality attributes, such as color, flavor, texture, taste, and overall appearance of perishable food products. The term reaction order is defined as the number of molecules participating in a reaction as reactants. In other words, reaction order is the sum of the exponents of the reactant species. In food science, it is quite common to describe a reaction as a first-order equation, even though the real mechanism is not first order. The reaction order is then referred to as pseudo first-order or, equivalently, as apparent first-order.
