Anet Režek Jambrak
University of Zagreb, Croatia
Title: "Greener" food processing in light of sustainability
Biography
Biography: Anet Režek Jambrak
Abstract
Non-thermal and innovative processing technologies are attracting great attention nowadays. The advantages of those “green” technologies lies in faster, better, cheaper, sustainable and optimised process for preservation of foods, modification of food components or to design “novel food”.
Application of thermal techniques is used for decades and non-thermal techniques are being “considered” in terms of food preservation. Non-thermal processing techniques include: electrotechnologies, UV light, cold pressure (high pressure processing), hydrodynamic cavitation, ionising radiation, ozonation, oscillating magnetic fields, pulsed light, supercritical fluid processing, biopreservation, electrohydrodynamic processing and electron beam processing.
Sustainability of non-thermal processing is now "hot" topic. Valorisation of agri-food wastes by non-thermal technologies is great research area nowadays. There is large discard of food by-products in food industry that can be used as energy or raw-material for other purposes. In order to think “green”, eco (economic, ecologic and environmental) we must think about having non-thermal processing in the way of less processing time, less energy consumption, less CO2 production and energy efficient processing (sustainability). Food scientists need to think to connect all processing variables and to have "green" strategy. There are methods of life cycle assessment (LCA); Quality function deployment etc. that can combine parameters and give results about improvement of processing, consumer’s preferences and impact on the environment. The use of "green" solvents is one example in sustainable extraction.
Non-thermal and innovative food processing can and must be optimised, and results should be transformed from lab scale to large scale (industry).