What is food processing?
The term, ‘food processing’ refers to any operation (mechanical, physical or chemical) carried out on food in order to change its properties. It can be a single operation or a …
Course: How Food is Made. Understanding Food Processing Technologies
Getting started
We want you to get the most out of this course. For discussions or questions about the course content, try using the comments section where you can help each other …
Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve collected together some of the questions Learners asked about this Week’s content when the course was last run and provided some answers here. You may have different questions. If …
Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve collected together some of the questions Learners asked about this Week’s content when the course was last run and provided some answers here. You may have different questions. If …
Common Questions about Food Processing
The Benefits of Food Processing Processed foods contain a lot of additives or ‘chemicals’ – is this bad or good? Firstly, the ‘chemicals’ term can mislead us – everything about …
EUFIC UK Consumer Study Part 2
Levels of processing (answer to question 8) The participants were shown a selection of apple products and asked how processed they thought they were. They rated them from 1 to …
Compare your results with those of UK consumers
The answers provided by the survey participants were analysed and categorised in themes. So, for example, in question 1, ‘cooking’ and ‘chopping’ were the most common answers and were categorized …
Perceptions of processed foods among UK consumers
There is an inconsistency between the negative perceptions consumers have of processed foods and the fact that the same consumers purchase and consume an enormous quantity of it. A qualitative …
Novel foods and how they are regulated
In the previous Step we looked at how the EU considers health claims made on food products. Another area where regulation is used to protect the consumer is in the …
Two case studies on regulating health claims
You may have noticed products on the supermarket shelves that claim they are good for your health. This might be in relation to heart health or growth and development. Some …
EU regulations
Legislation and regulation of foods is key to ensuring that you can have confidence in the safety of the food you eat. Because of this, the European Union (as well …
Alternatives to heat treatments that preserve food and extend shelf life
The success of new technologies for food processing is highly dependent on consumer response to the new products. Emerging technologies must be accompanied by transparent information from the food industry …
Active and intelligent packaging
Food packaging has many functions and in its most basic form it is used to prevent food from coming into contact with contaminants, whilst also making items easier to handle …
Using ionising radiation to process food
The use of ionising radiation dates back to 1895, when Röntgen discovered X-rays. He described them as ‘fast moving electrons’. By 1896 the technology was already being considered for the …
Case study: Acrylamide
As we said in Step 3.2, continuous innovation in the food industry is vital. It can be driven by the emergence of new technologies such as HPP but can also …
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How Food is Made. Understanding Food Processing Technologies