4. Eco-Friendly Food Processing: 21st Century Challenges

In past 30 years food has become a way of life“. More educated with information’s through media such as internet and TV, consumer’s requirements for more convenient, diverse, less processed and healthier food products grow up exponentially. This kind of demands puts food manufacturers in position to find new innovative methods and technologies, mostly from fundamental science that could be applied as techniques for improved and enhanced production of various foodstuffs. So far, preservation technologies for foods were based on various unit operations such as pasteurization, sterilization, boiling, cooking, drying, extraction, homogenization mainly powered by traditional “fuels” such as steam and hot air that could provide enough heat important for thermal operations which includes already mentioned processes for the purpose of well processed raw material together with guarantee for microbiological safety, nutritional, textural and sensory attributes of final products. Therefore, ECO-FRIENDLY diverse improved technologies usually called “minimal processing technologies” have been developed at the end of twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century to provide us with eco-friendly, healthier, nutritive enriched, less polluted and less processed foods, together or in combination with serious consideration concerning possible consequences of these technological applications from the processing point of view. However negative consequences of these applied technologies lies mainly in initial investment which could be quite expensive but there is no alternative for cleaner and safer production. Less energy usage, improvements in quality (textural, sensory, microbiological) and yield, heating efficiency, significantly decreased usage of emulsifiers and additives, decreased emission of pollutant gasses are just some of the positive “feedbacks” that gives us cleaner, safer and more acceptable foods. There is even greater need to combine novel technologies with results in way of large scale processing plants to provide an easier access to modern, eco-friendly, environmentally more appropriate and safer food technologies.