ABSTRACT
Shelf life is an intriguing concept that results from merging scientically based issues with economic, regulatory, and consumer-related concerns. The latter, which may greatly vary from country to country, are dynamic aspects liable to change according to society transformations, especially in terms of habits and needs. This is the reason there is not a uniform and generally accepted denition of shelf life. In recent decades, its meaning has been subjected to some interesting variations that re›ect social and economic evolution. The difculty to clearly dene what shelf life actually is has had repercussions on the methodologies developed to carry out its assessment. According to the complexity of the shelf life concept, these methodologies should merge scientically based procedures, mainly based on classical kinetic
CONTENTS
1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................1 1.2 Primary and Secondary Shelf Life: General Concepts ....................................2 1.3 Shelf Life Denitions from a Historical Perspective ........................................5 1.4 Shelf Life versus Stability Studies ....................................................................7 1.5 Reasons to Assess the Shelf Life of Foods .......................................................7 1.6 Shelf Life Communication ............................................................................. 10 1.7 Book Organization .......................................................................................... 12 1.8 References ....................................................................................................... 13
or dedicated statistical techniques, with more “arbitrary” ones that take into account economic and marketing reasons together with considerations of consumer behavior. Several methodologies for shelf life assessment have been developed in different elds of science, especially those dealing with drugs, cosmetics, foods, and electric and electronic devices. Some of these methodologies are quite complex to be easily transferred from one eld of science to another as well as from academia to industries, especially to small and medium enterprises. This is particularly true for the food sector; due to the lack of a coherent and unied view of the shelf life issue and of affordable and cost-effective methodologies, companies frequently develop their own shelf life assessment procedures, whose scientic principles are sometimes questionable. It is interesting to note that, despite the fact that shelf life dating is compulsory in many countries for a great variety of food items, a wide and shared agreement on the methodologies and protocols to be used is available in only a few cases.
