Abstract
A high-pressure CO2 process applied to ready-to-eat food products guarantees an increase of both their microbial safety and shelf-life. However, the treatment often produces unwanted changes in the visual appearance of products depending on the adopted process conditions. Accordingly, the alteration of the visual appearance influences consumers’ perception and acceptability. This study aims at identifying the optimal treatment conditions in terms of visual appearance by using an artificial vision system. The developed methodology was applied to fresh-cut carrots (Daucus carota) as the test product. The results showed that carrots packaged in 100% CO2 and subsequently treated at 6 MPa and 40 °C for 15 min maintained an appearance similar to the fresh product for up to 7 days of storage at 4 °C. Mild appearance changes were identified at 7 and 14 days of storage in the processed products. Microbiological analysis performed on the optimal treatment condition showed the microbiological stability of the samples up to 14 days of storage at 4 °C. The artificial vision system, successfully applied to the CO2 pasteurization process, can easily be applied to any food process involving changes in the appearance of any food product.
Highlights
In the last decade, the consumption of ready-to-eat (RTE) products has widely increased
We show the results on (i) the selection of the best modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) for untreated fresh carrots; (ii) the identification of the supercritical CO2 (ScCO2)-MAP operating conditions preserving the fresh appearance of carrots after treatment and evaluation of the appearance change during storage; and (iii) the verification of the microbiological safety for carrots processed at optimal ScCO2-MAP operating conditions only
Multivariate hypothesis testing was performed on all the untreated control samples by projecting them into the Principal component analysis (PCA) model built on fresh carrot samples Xf (Section 2.4.3)
Summary
The consumption of ready-to-eat (RTE) products has widely increased. Due to the recent outbreaks in RTE foods [2,3], microbial safety is of primary importance and new strategies should be implemented to reduce the risk of food contamination. MAP has been coupled with innovative low temperature treatments to increase the microbiological safety, such as gamma radiation [4], ultraviolet light [5], ozone [6], high-voltage electrostatic fields [7], and high pressure [8]. Spilimbergo et al [9] proposed a new method to inactivate the microbial population in food at low temperature which combines the advantages of supercritical CO2 inactivation within a MAP (ScCO2-MAP). Similar to traditional supercritical CO2 (ScCO2) treatment [10,11], ScCO2-MAP uses ScCO2 to inactivate microorganisms, but acts directly inside the packaging, reducing the risk of cross-contamination after processing
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