Progresses in processing technologies for special foods with ultra-long shelf life

Abstract

Foods for special applications have recently received much attention due to rapid development of space and military industries as well as to frequent occurrence of natural and man-made disasters. Since the way such foods are processed clearly and directly affects their consumer’s acceptability and shelf life, it is of interest to explore in detail how these special foods can be processed. This article presents a review on the difficulties in the processing, application and storage as well as on how to ensure the shelf life and acceptability of special foods through the use of efficient processing technologies. Emphasis is made on the use of both conventional and alternative thermal processing and irradiation technologies. Appropriate packaging technologies for each of the discussed special foods are also mentioned along with the way to overcome the problem of product quality degradation. Through comparison and analysis, it is found that foods with different attributes require different technologies and processes to achieve desirable results. Combined use of multiple technologies has also noted to be advantageous.

Keywords:

• Emergency foods
• irradiation
• military foods
• packagings
• space foods
• thermal processing

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the financial supports from the National Key R and D Program of China (Contract No. 2017YFD0400501), 111 Project (BP0719028), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control,” Industry Development Program, National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (No. JUFSTR20180205), all of which enabled us to carry out this study.