Handbook

As modern consumers, we have come to demand easy access to a vast and continuous array of safe, nutritious, and functional food. However, raw food materials are typically unpalatable and highly perishable. Further, ensuring a food supply that is abundant, sustainable, and safe to eat depends on using the most appropriate methods to grow, process, preserve, package, and distribute a variety raw food ingredients. As future food technologists, you must understand how food ingredients behave physically, chemically, and microbiologically in their environment to select the best ways to transform raw food materials into safe and saleable food products.

In this course, you will learn about the major raw food categories within our food industry, such as meat, cereals, milk, eggs, sugar, fish/seafood, fruit and vegetables, fats and oils, soy, coffee and tea. You will investigate their physical and chemical characteristics, their preservation, and the common technologies used to process them. You will also investigate the principles of some fundamental food preservation methods including thermal processing, freezing and chilling, dehydration, modified atmosphere and chemical preservation.