ABSTRACT
THE commercial approach to food quality is undergoing both an evolution and a revolution. Quality evaluation systems are evolving from a perspective of Quality Control to Quality Assurance to Quality Management. These changes have necessitated revolutionary switches of emphasis from inspecting quality to improving processes that result in enhanced quality. They also assume a shift from a product orientation to a consumer orientation in defining quality. Rather than providing intellectual leadership in a reshaping of thought on quality as it applies to processed products, academic research in food science has generally regarded quality as a tool to evaluate other objectives (e.g., food process development, food product development, new package assessment). Thus, food quality is still generally defined by the investigator in terms of clearly measurable characteristics rather than in terms of consumer acceptability. Within a food process, tradeoffs frequently occur such that quality can be optimized and not maximized. Thus, changes in quality of a specific product undergoing a specific process are described in relative changes of specific characteristics (e.g., color, flavor or texture) rather than a composite of these characteristics.
