ABSTRACT

While the application of heat in the food industry can serve a variety of purposes, thermal processing of foods refers to the application of heat in order to preserve product quality and extend its shelf life. Thermal processing represents a major food preservation technique. It consists of heating a product at a rather high temperature for a relatively short time in an accurately designed and wellexecuted process. The product either before (traditional canning) or after (aseptic processing) the thermal treatment is enclosed into hermetically sealed containers. Unlike a number of food preservation methods, such as drying, freezing, or cold storage, which rely on altering product or environmental conditions in order to diminish product degradation reactions, thermal processing acts by destroying the undesirable agents, including pathogenic or spoilage microorganisms, enzymes, and toxins that could limit product shelf life. High-pressure processing, food irradiation, and a number of novel food preservation methods aiming also at destroying unwanted and quality-and shelf-lifereducing parameters are, in fact, following the thermal process design principles introduced almost a century ago (Bigelow et al., 1920).