ABSTRACT
Thermal processing of canned foods has been one of the most widely used methods of food preservation during the twentieth century and has contributed signiƒcantly to the nutritional well-being of much of the world’s population. Thermal processing consists of heating food containers in pressurized retorts at speciƒed temperatures for prescribed lengths of time. These process times are calculated on the basis of achieving sufƒcient bacterial inactivation in each container to comply with public health standards and to ensure that the probability of spoilage will be less than some minimum. Associated with each thermal process is always some degradation of heat-sensitive vitamins and other quality factors that is undesirable. Because of these quality and safety factors,
4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 81 4.2 Thermal Death Time Relationships ........................................................................................ 82 4.3 Process Lethality and Sterilizing Value ................................................................................. 83
4.3.1 Time at Temperature for Isothermal Process ............................................................. 83 4.3.2 Process Lethality ........................................................................................................84 4.3.3 Speciƒcation of Process Lethality ..............................................................................87
