FOOD SAFETY Unit 1: Food Inspection Topic: Factors influencing food quality
Overview • Quality of a food product involves maintenance or improvement of the key attributes of the product • Appearance • Colour, size, shape • Flavour • Texture • Safety • Healthfulness • Shelf life • Convenience
Overview • To maintain quality, it is important to control microbiological spoilage, enzymatic degradation, and chemical degradation. • These components of quality depend upon the composition of the food, processing methods, packaging, and storage
Appearance Factors • Of the sensory attributes of food, those related to appearance are the most susceptible to objective measurement • Appearance is important to the consumers • expectations of how food should look • Two separate categories of appearance include: • 1. Colour attributes • 2. Geometric attributes (size and shape)
Appearance Factors Colour • Food colour measurements provide an objective index of food quality. • Indication of ripeness or spoilage • End point of cooking processes • Changes in expected colours can indicate problems with the processing or packaging
Appearance Factors Colours • Browns and blackish colours can be either enzymatic or non-enzymatic reactions • Non-enzymatic • Maillard reaction, which is the dominant browning reaction • Enzymatic • Oxidation in fruits and vegetables • Natural occurring pigments • Myoglobin contributes to the colour of meat
Appearance of foods • Measuring Colour • Needs to be standardized • If a food is transparent, like a juice or a coloured extract, colorimeters or spectrophotometers can be used for colour measurement. • The colour of liquid or solid foods can be measured by comparing their reflected colour to defined (standardized) colour tiles or chips.
Appearance of foods • Size and Shape • Depending on the product, consumers expect foods to have certain sizes and shapes • Size and shape are easily measured. • Fruits and vegetables are graded based on their size and shape, and this is done by the openings they will pass through during grading. • Now computerized electronic equipment can determine the size and shape of foods.
Textural Factors • Refers to the quality felt by the fingers or when chewing, biting • Refers to the mechanical behaviour of foods measured by sensory or physical means • Change in texture is often due to water • Loss • Gain
Flavour Factors • Taste perceived by tongue • Sweet, bitter, salt, sour • Often flavour and taste used interchangable • Difficult to measure based on individual preference • Influence decision to purchase and eat foods • Bacteria, yeast, enzymes, time, additives, moisture/dryness, heat/cold
Flavour factors • Professional taste panel • Group of consumers
Additional quality factors • Shelf life • Enhanced by preservation methods • Safety • Regulatory control • Healthfulness • Healthy lifestyle – functional foods • Oats, soy, tomato • Convenience • Chopped vegetables vs whole vegetables
Food quality standards Ensure standardization of food quality • Types of standards include: • Research standards • set up by a company to help ensure the quality of its products in a competitive market • Trade standards • Established by members of an industry • Voluntary and assure at least minimum acceptable quality • Government standards • some are mandatory and some are optional. • Grade standards • Established by the government, provide a common language for producers, dealers, and consumers for buying and selling
Conclusion • Food quality factors are important determinants of purchasing • Quality factors vary according to consumer • The PHI not only focus on safety factors, but ensures that consumers get value for money
