Thermodynamic Aspects of High Hydrostatic Pressure Food Processing

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the research activity on high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) was focused on evaluating the biological effects of pressure on microorganisms, foods, and food components. Most researchers followed an exploratory approach to identify potential applications of this technology in food processing and preservation. Examples of HHP food applications are microbial and enzyme inactivation (Hendrickx et al., 1998; Farkas and Hoover, 2000), promotion of protein conformational changes (Balny et al., 1997; Gross and Jaenicke 1994), and starch gelatinization (Douzlas et al., 1998).