Course: How Food is Made. Understanding Food Processing Technologies

HPP stands for high pressure processing. ‘High’ is extremely high and pressure levels of up to 600 MPa (6000 bar) are achieved. To give you an idea of scale, the …

PEF can be applied for different purposes. Let’s return to our apple to illustrate this through two examples: Juice extraction Image by ELEA After harvesting the apples, they are transported …

Pulsed electric fields (PEF) can be applied to a range of products for a variety of purposes. It is used to induce a stress response in cells and soften tissue, …

Tradition and innovation are often considered to be opposites, which makes innovation in the relatively traditional food market challenging. The food industry has enormous potential for innovation, but at the …

Many of us enjoy the flavour of smoked foods, but why do we do it and is it safe? Smoking dates to prehistoric times and was originally used for the …

Throughout history, people have prepared dried foods, including meat, vegetables, herbs and fruits, through evaporating the water they contain in the hot sun or over fires. Dried foods have been …

In this video, we show you how one of the most common food processing technologies is carried out – preserving food in metal cans. Tinned tomatoes Tinned or canned tomatoes …

We continue our exploration of frequently used, traditional food processing techniques with a look at pasteurisation. This is an extremely useful method of eliminating potentially harmful microorganisms and is used …

You’ve now seen how and why milk is homogenised. Let’s look at another milk processing technique – UHT – and a common way of preserving fresh vegetables – freezing. Ultra-high …

This video is filmed in the University of Reading Pilot Plant, part of the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences. It’s purpose is to provide students with experience of industrial …

Before we start this week’s journey, let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of food processing. Infographic showing 11 advantages of food processing. © EUFIC Source Let’s look at some …

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, …

Food can be processed in many ways and, as you already have learned, this can include very simple home-processing methods. Remember that food processing includes anything that changes a food’s …

Ensuring a sustainable supply of food for the world’s fast-growing population is a major challenge. Food production is one of the key areas that requires action, alongside issues of food …