Fundamentals of Food Processing, Packaging, Labelling and Marketing

The food industry is a complex, global collective of diverse businesses that supply much of the food energy consumed by the world population. Only subsistence farmers, those who survive on what they grow, can be considered outside of the scope of the modern food industry. During the industrialisation era in the 19th century, food manufacturing arose. This development took advantage of new mass markets and emerging new technology, such as milling, preservation, packaging and labelling and transportation. At the start of the 21st century, a two-tier structure has arisen, with a few international food processing giants controlling a wide range of well-known food brands, and a populous number of small local or national food processing companies. Food processing includes the methods and techniques used to transform raw ingredients into food for human consumption. Food processing takes clean, harvested or slaughtered and butchered components and uses them to produce marketable food products. There are several different ways in which food can be produced. Food packaging is packaging for food. A package provides protection, tampering resistance, and special physical, chemical, or biological needs. It may bear a nutrition facts label and other information about food being offered for sale. Modernization of nutrition and health information on food labels is an essential weapon in the fight against obesity and diet-related diseases. Cost-benefit analyses of previous food labelling reforms show that the costs of changing food labels is greatly outweighed by the health benefits of providing consumers with better label information. Food marketing brings together the producer and the consumer. Fundamentals of Food Processing, Packaging, Labelling and Marketing: assembles the most recent information available for the efficient design and development of processes used in the manufacturing of food products, along with traditional background and fundamental information. In keeping with the comprehensive and informative style of the original, this second edition focuses on the thermophysical properties of food and the rate constants of change in food components during processing. It highlights the use of these properties and constants in process design.