Benefits and drawbacks

Benefits of food processing include toxin removal, preservation, easing marketing and distribution tasks, and increasing food consistency. In addition, it increases seasonal availability of many foods, enables transportation of delicate perishable foods across long distances and makes many kinds of foods safe to eat by de-activating spoilage and pathogenic micro-organisms. Modern supermarkets would not be feasible without modern food processing techniques, long voyages would not be possible and military campaigns would be significantly more difficult and costly to execute.

Processed foods are usually less susceptible to early spoilage than fresh foods and are better suited for long distance transportation from the source to the consumer. When they were first introduced, some processed foods helped to alleviate food shortages and improved the overall nutrition of populations as it made many new foods available to the masses.

Processing can also reduce the incidence of food borne disease. Fresh materials, such as fresh produce and raw meats, are more likely to harbour pathogenic micro-organisms (e.g. Salmonella) capable of causing serious illnesses.

The extremely varied modern diet is only truly possible on a wide scale because of food processing. Transportation of more exotic foods, as well as the elimination of much hard labour gives the modern eater easy access to a wide variety of food unimaginable to their ancestors. Besides, the act of processing can often improve the taste of food significantly.

Mass production of food is much cheaper overall than individual production of meals from raw ingredients. Therefore, a large profit potential exists for the manufacturers and suppliers of processed food products. Individuals may see a benefit in convenience, but rarely see any direct financial cost benefit in using processed food as compared to home preparation.

Processed food freed people from the large amount of time involved in preparing and cooking "natural" unprocessed foods. The increase in free time allows people much more choice in life style than previously allowed. In many families the adults are working away from home and therefore there is little time for the preparation of food based on fresh ingredients. The food industry offers products that fulfill many different needs: from peeled potatoes that only have to be boiled at home to fully prepared ready meals that can be heated up in the microwave oven within a few minutes.

Modern food processing also improves the quality of life for people with allergies, diabetics, and other people who cannot consume some common food elements. Food processing can also add extra nutrients such as vitamins.

Any processing of food can have slight effects on its nutritional density. Vitamin C, for example, is destroyed by heat and therefore canned fruits have a lower content of vitamin C than fresh ones. The USDA conducted a study in 2004, creating a nutrient retention table for several foods. A cursory glance of the table indicates that, in the majority of foods, processing reduces nutrients by a minimal amount. On average any given nutrient may be reduced by as little as 5%-20%, which could be offset easily by the use of a Multivitamin.

Another safety concern in food processing is the use of food additives. The health risks of any additives will vary greatly from person to person, in example sugar as an additive would be detrimental to those with diabetes. In the European Union, only food additives (e.g., sweeteners, preservatives, stabilizers) that have been approved as safe for human consumption by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) are allowed, at specified levels, for use in food products. Approved additives receive an E number (E for Europe), which at the same time simplifies communication about food additives in the list of ingredients across the different languages of the EU.

Food processing is typically a mechanical process that utilizes large mixing, grinding, chopping and emulsifying equipment in the production process. These processes inherently introduce a number of contaminate risks. As a mixing bowl or grinder is used over time the food contact parts will tend to fail and fracture. This type of failure will introduce in to the product stream small to large metal contaminates. Further processing of these metal fragments will result in downstream equipment failure and the risk of ingestion by the consumer.

Food manufactures utilize industrial metal detectors to detect and reject automatically any metal fragment. Large food processors will utilize many metal detectors within the processing stream to both ensure reduced damage to processing machinery as well risk to the consumer. The first industrial level metal detector pioneered by Goring Kerr was introduced back in 1947 for Mars Incorporated.

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
	\|	Food presentation

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.004 сек.