Processing, Storage and Quality of Cook-Chill or Cook-Freeze Foods

Abstract

Over the history of mankind, food preservation has played a crucial role in alleviating hunger and famine when food was less abundant and was instrumental in supplying edible foods for armies, voyagers and explorations that led to significant changes in human history. Progress in food preservation and processing can be considered as four main processing paradigm shifts over human history: (1) production of safe foods (early human trials–1950s); (2) production of safe food that have desirable sensory properties, i.e. looks good and tastes good, (1960s–1980s); (3) production of safe high quality food that is nutritionally sound (1990s–2000s); and 4) production of safe nutritious high quality food that delivers specific functions (2000s–present). Hence, the food industry moved from primitive concepts, such as simple dehydrated products and cured foods, to technologies such as canning, refrigeration and freezing. The purpose was to meet the demands for healthy and nutritious safe foods.