ABSTRACT
It has been attempted in this book to give a comprehensive account of models available to the food scientist to describe quality changes, as well as to discuss tools to work with these models in relation to foods. Looking back on all this, we may conclude that there are many possibilities but also many pitfalls. As long as the modeler is aware of this, modeling is a very powerful tool. As discussed in Chapter 1, we have decomposed food quality in food quality attributes and their performance indicators in order to be able to model it from a technological point of view. What we did not discuss is if and how these models can be integrated to predict something about food quality as a whole. A consumer does not decompose food quality in chemical, physical, microbial, or biochemical aspects but he=she will give an overall judgment that cannot be predicted so easily from the sum of the decomposed quality attributes. So, if we want to use models in food design, or to predict shelf life, we need to integrate various aspects. This is not straightforward and we may need new, dynamic models of a stochastic nature. There are some attempts described in literature, but not too much. So, more emphasis should be paid to this aspect in the author’s view. Furthermore, as indicated repeatedly, much more emphasis should be given to food matrix effects if we want to predict real food situations. Last but not least, to make the link with consumer’s appreciation of food quality, we are in need of models that connect consumer wishes to product properties. There are some new developments that may help in this respect, though it is fair to say that the holy grail has not been found as of yet. In this last Chapter 15, we briefly touch upon some of these developments without going into detail because that would require a new book.
