ABSTRACT
Consumers around the world are better educated and more demanding in their identication and purchase of quality health-promoting foods. The food industry and regulatory agencies are searching for innovative technologies to provide safe and stable foods for their clientele. Thermal pasteurization and commercial sterilization of foods provide safe and nutritious foods that, unfortunately, are often heated beyond a safety factor that results in unacceptable quality and nutrient retention. Nonthermal processing technologies offer unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the food industry to market safe, high-quality health-promoting foods. The development of nonthermal processing technologies for food processing is providing an excellent balance between safety and minimal processing, between acceptable economic constraints and superior quality, and between unique approaches and traditional processing resources (Zhang et al., 2011). Nonthermal food processing is often perceived as an alternative to thermal food processing; yet, there are many nonthermal preparatory unit operations as well as food processing and preservation opportunities and challenges that require further investigation by the food industry. Nonthermal technologies are useful not only for inactivation of microorganisms and enzymes, but also to improve yield and development of ingredients and marketable foods with novel quality and nutritional characteristics (Bermudez-Aguirre and Barbosa-Canovas, 2011).
