現代の化学と応用

概要

An Overview on the Thermodynamic Techniques used in Food Chemistry

Prabal Giri and Churala Pal

The thermal behaviour of food strongly depends on its composition. The goals of food processing are to inactivate spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms and to maintain this status in storage. Using calorimetric techniques, many physicochemical effects can be observed in the temperature range between -50°C and 300°C. Biophysical techniques namely isothermal titration (ITC) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) are used to characterize the structure and properties of food materials before and after processing to develop a fundamental understanding of the impact of processing and storage conditions. The data resulting from such studies can be used to predict the physical properties of foods under optimized condition.