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This chapter is in the newly named Aspects of Food Processing section of the text. The chapters covering food preservation and food additives components of the food processing section are discussed in Chaps. 16 and 17 , respectively.
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Food Packaging
Introduction This chapter is in the newly named Aspects of Food Processing section of the text. The chapters covering food preservation and food additives components of the food processing section are discussed in Chaps. 16 and 17, respectively. Adequate packaging is an industry technique that may be used along with preservation and has the intent of slowing down or stopping spoilage that would otherwise exhibit loss of taste, textural quality, or nutritive value of food. Crops as well as animal products produce market-ready and adequately long shelf life food products if adequately packaged. As presented in the chapter on food preservation, processed foods represent the change of raw material into food of another form. Food processing involves preservation and also packaging. For added clarification, and a succinct explanation, the following is utilized. Food processing and preservation are two techniques that are used to maintain the quality and freshness of foods. In terms of how they are performed, food processing and preservation are different; food preservation is just part of the entire procedure of processing foods. Food processing mostly involves both packaging and preservation, while food preservation is concerned with the control and elimination of
the agents of food spoilage. . . (http://www. wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-betweenfood-processing-and-preservation.htm) (italics added)
Packaging as part of food processing assists in preserving food against spoilage and contamination as well as extending the shelf life. It provides containment (holding the product), protection (quality, safety, freshness), information (graphics, labels), and utility of use or convenience (The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI), Washington, DC). Yet, packaging offers much more than these benefits to the manufacturer and consumer. Packaging protects food, may modify atmosphere, thus extending shelf life, gets a message across, aids in marketing, provides added content security, and so forth. It may provide portion control, combating “portion distortion,” convenience of use, and convenient transport. This assists the child as well as the adult consumer. Packaging may simply involve having clean hands, a sanitary pair of foodservice tongs, and a piece of tissue in a bag served across a bakery counter or, it may involve adherence to a specific time and temperature heat application in a foodservice can that is transported along continents. There is great variance in the idea of packaging food to be discussed in this chapter.
V.A. Vaclavik and E.W. Christian, Essentials of Food Science, 4th Edition, Food Science Text Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-9138-5_18, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
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There exist various packaging materials, including films, and package oxygen levels that protect foods from air. Packaging may also maintain time-sensitive foods and use dating or doneness indicators. It may be used as a promotion tool on store sales shelves. Packaging materials for food in
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