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Summary of the Week and looking ahead

This article summarises what we've done in Week 1 and looks ahead at what Week 2 will cover.

During the first week, you learned what the term ‘food processing’ means and why we need to process food.

Food processing at the industrial scale, aims to deliver high quality, safe products in a sustainable way, that meet the demands of consumers. There are many reasons why food is processed and they include:

Making foods edible
Increasing the shelf life of food and preventing microbial contamination for the duration
Maintaining the (nutritional) quality and stability of food as well as ensuring the retention of health-related components
Increasing the availability of food throughout the year
Increasing the range of products that are convenient and suit our on-the-go lifestyle
Ensuring food is affordable.

Building on this foundation, Week 2 of the course will introduce you to traditional, widely used processing technologies such as homogenisation, pasteurisation, canning and drying. You’ll discuss their advantages and disadvantages and the products they are used in. We look forward to seeing you next week.