The effect of electron beam irradiation on the microbial stability and quality characteristics of vacuum‐packaged ready‐to‐eat potato

Electromagnetic wave-based technology for ready-to-eat foods preservation: a review of applications, challenges and prospects

In recent years, the ready-to-eat foods market has grown significantly due to its high nutritional value and convenience. However, these foods are also at risk of microbial contamination, which poses food safety hazards. Additionally, traditional high-temperature sterilization methods can cause food safety and nutritional health problems such as protein denaturation and lipid oxidation. Therefore, exploring and developing effective sterilization technologies is imperative to ensure food safety and nutritional properties, and protect consumers from potential foodborne diseases. This paper focuses on electromagnetic wave-based pasteurization technologies, including thermal processing technologies such as microwave, radio frequency, and infrared, as well as non-thermal processing technologies like ultraviolet, irradiation, pulsed light, and photodynamic inactivation. Furthermore, it also reviews the antibacterial mechanisms, advantages, disadvantages, and recent applications of these technologies in ready-to-eat foods, and summarizes their limitations and prospects. By comparing the limitations of traditional high-temperature sterilization methods, this paper highlights the significant advantages of these pasteurization techniques in effectively inhibiting microbial growth, slowing lipid oxidation, and preserving food nutrition and flavor. This review may contribute to the industrial application and process optimization of these pasteurization technologies, providing an optimal choice for preserving various types of ready-to-eat foods.

Estimation of doses absorbed by potato tubers under electron beam or X-ray irradiation using an optical fingerprinting strategy

High-energy electron beam and X-ray processing of foods can be used for extending their storage life and for combating pests and pathogens. Several instrumental techniques are used to estimate irradiation doses in foods, but these methods are complex and laborious, require expensive equipment, and do not always allow to determine low doses. This study was aimed at developing simple methods for detecting irradiation in potato tubers and for dose estimation. We used a "fingerprinting" strategy that does not involve quantitation of any compound; instead, the rate of indicator reactions involving carbocyanine dyes is measured. The dye content was monitored by its near-infrared fluorescence intensity and visible-light absorption. Potatoes not subjected to treatment and those irradiated with different doses (10, 100, 1000, 5000, or 10,000 Gray) could be distinguished by linear discriminant analysis. Thus, the order of magnitude of the absorbed dose can be estimated with 89% ± 3% accuracy for a mixture of tubers of two potato varieties irradiated with an electron beam or with 95% ± 8% accuracy for one variety irradiated with an X-ray source.

Advances in prepared dish processing using efficient physical fields: A review

Prepared dishes are increasingly popular convenience food that can be eaten directly from hygienic packaging by heating. Physics field (PF) is food processing method built with physical processing technology, which has the characteristics of high efficiency and environmental safety. This review focuses on summarizing the application of PFs in prepared dishes, evaluating and comparing PFs through quality changes during processing and storage of prepared dishes. Currently, improving the quality and extending the shelf life of prepared dishes through thermal and non-thermal processing are the main modes of action of PFs. Most PFs show good potential in handing prepared dishes, but may also react poorly to some prepared dishes. In addition, the difficulty of precise control of processing conditions has led to research mostly at the laboratory stage, but as physical technology continues to break through, more PFs and multi-physical field will be promoted for commercial use in the future. This review contributes to a deeper understanding of the effect of PFs on prepared dishes, and provides theoretical reference and practical basis for future processing research in the development of various enhanced PFs.