Pasteurization Technologies Employed In The Food Industry

Jul 27, 2010 @ 05:00 am by Guest Author

Pasteurization describes the process created by Louis Pasteur. This fellow discovered a method of purifying certain foods and liquids, and it’s still in use today. Pasteurization is most commonly known as the reason we can have fresh milk from the farm, days after harvesting.

One may notice that pasteurization isn’t the best in the taste category. While pasteurization is necessary and still makes a great end product, there are those that say the process takes too much flavor out of the item being processed. Where milk is concerned, one can taste the difference by selecting different brands of milk based on how they were sterilized.

Taste isn’t such an issue in the end. The real fact to consider is that pasteurization has been shown to take out helpful enzymes, vitamins, and minerals that are in milk. Often, the milk you see in stores will have been supplemented with such things to put the healthy materials back into the milk. You may see special fortified milk types, although they cost more money.

Technology is a wonderful thing. There are now processes that will allow the average carton of milk last months while on the shelf. You certainly wouldn’t be able to do this with a standard carton of milk found at a modern grocery store, however. With new types of heat treatment, and special packaging, one can find even organic types of milks that only need refrigerated after being opened for the first time.

Don’t forget that the world of pasteurization encompasses much more than milk. There are other foods and liquids that pasteurization has done a world of good for. This would include alcoholic beverages, but also foods like crab and nuts. Imitation crab meat especially is a product that can withstand spoiling, as it can be pasteurized and packaged to be shipped all around the United States. Other items might include cream, soy sauce, honey, and more.

In relation to homogenization, pasteurization is seen as a healthier alternative. Homogenization is a type of sterilization that instead attempts to make the entire milk product the same throughout the body of liquid in the container- effectively “smashing” fat molecules into each other. In the process, proteins and other good materials are being made worthless as they are going to bypass the digestion process, and not be absorbed as they normally would.

Final Thoughts

Starting your own pasteurization process is easy to do. You can buy a machine does all the dirty work for you. So long as you have an Internet connection, there will be plenty of places to find leads on brokers, resellers, manufacturers, and private sellers in your area.

Learn more on Pasteurisation and tunnel pasteurizer.