Thermal pasteurization of ready-to-eat foods and vegetables: Critical factors for process design and effects on quality

ABSTRACT

Increasing consumer desire for high quality ready-to-eat foods makes thermal pasteurization important to both food producers and researchers. To be in compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), food companies seek regulatory and scientific guidelines to ensure that their products are safe. Clearly understanding the regulations for chilled or frozen foods is of fundamental importance to the design of thermal pasteurization processes for vegetables that meet food safety requirements. This article provides an overview of the current regulations and guidelines for pasteurization in the U.S. and in Europe for control of bacterial pathogens. Poorly understood viral pathogens, in terms of their survival in thermal treatments, are an increasing concern for both food safety regulators and scientists. New data on heat resistance of viruses in different foods are summarized. Food quality attributes are sensitive to thermal degradation. A review of thermal kinetics of inactivation of quality-related enzymes in vegetables and the effects of thermal pasteurization on vegetable quality is presented. The review also discusses shelf-life of thermally pasteurized vegetables.

KEYWORDS:

• Thermal pasteurization
• regulations
• pathogens
• ready-to-eat
• vegetables
• FSMA

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Chinese Scholarship Council for providing a scholarship to Jing Peng for her PhD Studies at Washington State University prior to her appointment at Nanjing Agricultural University.

Funding

This research was funded by the U.S. Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Grant Number #2011–68003–20096, & #2016-68003-20096, and partially by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China(KYZ201655).