Issue 3 2005

Pasta: strength and structure

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Martin G. Scanlon, Nancy M. Edwards and Jim E. Dexter

Every year, in various educational institutions across the globe, students compete to design and build bridges made from spaghetti strands. In most competitions, the winner is that student team whose bridge can sustain the highest load (Johns Hopkins, 2005). Clearly some elaborate design work goes into the creation of these food engineering masterpieces (Figure 1).

However, bridge building is not the only use for pasta! Many nutritious and appetising dishes can be made from various pasta structures, such as spaghetti, lasagna, gnocchetti, manicotti, capellini, fettuccine, etc. For all pasta products, the preferred primary ingredient is semolina – coarse flour made from durum wheat. Pasta can be made from common wheat (bread-making and confectionery wheat), but is perceived as inferior to durum wheat pasta and, in some countries, legislation prohibits the addition of common wheat ingredients beyond a specified small percentage in pasta. Durum wheat was originally cultivated in the Mediterranean where, today, semolina is also used for the manufacture of specialty breads and products such as couscous, bulgar and frekeh. In recent years the proportion of durum wheat used for bread-making has been increasing.

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Tagged with: Ingredients, Jim E. Dexter, Martin G Scanlon, Nancy M. Edwards, Pasta, Processing

Adding to the mix

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Bogdan Dobraszczyk, Senior Research Fellow, School of Food Biosciences, University of Reading

Various ingredients have long been known to have a beneficial effect on baked loaf volume and texture. Ingredients such as fats and lipids, surfactants, oxidants and enzymes are frequently added to bread formulations to give improved product quality by giving better tolerance during processing; improving texture and volume; increasing shelf life or by minimising the natural variability in quality and the effects of different types of milling amongst different wheat flours. Combinations of these ingredients are sold to the baking industry as bread improvers.

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Tagged with: Bogdan Dobraszczyk, Ingredients, Processing, University of Reading

Waiting for a trainer

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Ellen Moens-Go Yanko, Office Manager, Secretariat, EHEDG

Share the expertise

Machines and Processes for Safe Food is the theme of the EHEDG seminar on September 14th at Drinktec, Munich. State-of-the-art engineering tools for hygienic design of both machinery and processes are essential for safe food and beverage manufacture. EHEDG speakers involved in work groups will share their expertise and know-how on this and related topics. See programme details.

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Tagged with: EHEDG, Ellen Moens-Go Yanko

Multibeverage plant of the future

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Mr Jari Kangas, Technical Development Manager, Oy Hartwall Ab and Project Manager for Hartwall Lahti

Hartwall Ltd is Finland’s leading beverage supplier and part of the Scottish & Newcastle Group. It has a 44 per cent share of the market through its strong portfolio of beers, soft drinks, bottled waters, ciders and other alcoholic beverages and functional drinks; as well as imported wines and spirits through its fully-owned subsidiary Hartwa-Trade.

Hartwall began its operations in 1836 as a producer of mineral waters in Finland’s capital, Helsinki. Today the company manufactures and markets beers, soft drinks and mineral waters as well as other beverages for various occasions. Hartwall is known for its high-quality branded beverages and popular brands include Lapin Kulta and Karjala beers; Hartwall specialty beers and Foster’s, brewed under licence; Upcider ciders; Hartwall Original Gin Long Drink and Otto RTD’s; the soft drinks Hartwall Jaffa and Pepsi; the Hartwall Novelle bottled waters and its own health and energy drinks.

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Tagged with: Company Profiles, Hartwall Lahti, Jari Kangas, Oy Hartwall Ab

Static and rotary spraying for perfect tank cleaning

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Frank Moerman, Chairman, EHEDG Belgium

In the beverage processing industry (spirits, brewing, juice bottling, dairy, etc.), cleaning-in-place is a well established technique. On a daily basis, huge numbers of small and large vessels must be cleaned in an economical, efficient and reproducible manner. To achieve these objectives, tank cleaning machines are used. In part 1 of his article, Frank Moerman compares the various static and rotary spraying heads offered for sale on the world market.

Cleaning-in-place is a method where cleaning of complete items of plant equipment or pipeline circuits is automatically performed without dismantling or opening the equipment. Little or no manual work on the part of the operator is involved. The process involves the circulation of cleaning solutions (detergent and cleaning solutions) through tanks and piping within the processing plant and the jetting or spraying of surfaces under conditions of increased turbulence and flow velocity. Cleaning-in-place is based on the application of a certain amount of energy – enough to ensure that the equipment surface is clean. This energy is provided by the solution temperature (thermal energy); the use of detergent or solvent (chemical energy) and the application of suitable pipeline velocities or pressures (kinetic energy).

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Tagged with: EHEDG, Frank Moerman

Cleaner greener production at Tayto Ireland

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / John Donnelly, Technical Director, Tayto Limited

Tayto, Ireland’s leading snack food company, participated in a scheme led by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the impact of manufacturing companies on the environment. Tayto improved environmental performance and reduced manufacturing costs as a result of success with a number of projects.

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Tagged with: John Donnelly, Processing, Tayto Limited

Where is the nut oil in chocolate?

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Greg Ziegler and Kristin Szlachetka,Cocoa, Chocolate and Confectionery Research Group, Department of Food Science, Penn State University

Oil migration is responsible for the poor keeping qualities of many composite confectionery products with nut-based centres, coated biscuits, or nut inclusions. Quality defects arising from oil migration include softening of the coating; hardening of the filling; deterioration in sensory quality and a greater tendency to fat bloom. For this reason, oil migration has been extensively studied (see references), most recently by magnetic resonance. Even with all the recent attention paid to the topic, confusion regarding its origins and control still exists.

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Tagged with: Analysis & control, Greg Ziegler, Kristin Szlachetka, Penn State University

What’s new in an old product?

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / H. Douglas Goff, Ph.D., Professor of Food Science, University of Guelph, Canada

Ice cream and related desserts have been manufactured for centuries, the history of which is a fascinating tale replete with old-fashioned imagery of wholesomeness, tradition, family fun and folklore1. Today, though, ice cream is a very large global business that is anything but standing still in tradition. This paper will review notable recent advances in formulations, ingredients and manufacturing equipment within the ice cream and related frozen dairy dessert category.

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Tagged with: H. Douglas Goff, University of Guelph

Implementing food safety and hygiene

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Dr Ken Burgess, Technical Director, Dairy Crest

Responsibility for safety from ‘farm to fork’ is obviously shared between farmers, manufacturers and processors, distributors, consumers and various government authorities. The perspective of the manufacturer is in ensuring that known food safety risks are managed and controlled, while the areas of new and emerging food safety risk have traditionally been the government’s domain. However, in recent years, the retailer has joined the manufacturer in taking responsibility for food safety in the factory and both have become more involved in assessing and managing potential new issues.

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Tagged with: Dairy Crest, Food safety, Hygiene, Ken Burgess, QA/QC

Fruitful improvements in dairy hygiene

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Gun Wirtanen and Satu Salo, VTT Biotechnology, Espoo, Finland

The project ‘DairyNET – Hygiene control in dairies’ was built both on common synergy tasks performed in all Nordic countries and on national research studies. The synergy tasks dealt with rapid detection of cleaning agents and disinfectants residues, detection of organic soil in processing equipment hot spots and detection of moulds contaminating cheese. The national research dealt with a checklist for hygiene control; milk quality through the whole process line; air quality; contamination routes for Listeria; quality of process waters; efficiency of CIP procedures; hygiene in supply systems; ultrasound cleaning procedures; bacterial resistance to disinfectants; hygienic design and integrated hygiene systems.

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Tagged with: Gun Wirtanen, Hygiene, QA/QC, Satu Salo, VTT Biotechnology

Protecting quality of sliced meats

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Jens Stoumann Jensen, Project Manager, M.Sc. Food Science and Technology, Danish Meat Research Institute

Manufacturers of cured and cooked sliced meats are met with increasing demands on shelf life and safety. Improved knowledge and understanding of the interactions between the packaging parameters and their influence on colour stability, sensory perception, microbial safety and shelf life will be indispensable if they want to stay in the market.

Residual oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide content (CO2) and relative amount of headspace as well as gas and light transmission rates through packaging materials are crucial parameters. Important, too, are composition, temperature and initial aerobic count. Individual optimisation of parameters detached from their context is unlikely to be successful.

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Tagged with: Danish Meat Research Institute, Jens Stoumann Jensen

Genomics in microbial food quality and safety

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Jos van der Vossen, Frank Schuren and Roy Montijn, TNO Quality of Life, The Netherlands

The food industry is assisted optima forma when a clear and rapid insight could be given into the presence and behavior of microorganisms in ingredients, processing, final product and health. A clear insight regarding the microbiology of food products and production is essential for prediction and management of food quality and safety.

State of the art

Insight into microbial issues is – to date – dependent on culturing, genetic typing and PCR detection. However, the information collected with these methods is highly restricted, yet inherent to the setup of methods for detection. The methods of detection are generally directed towards groups of microbes such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, lactic acid bacteria, yeasts etc. It is obvious that really important information such as virulence and resistance to preservatives, low water activity and heat is ignored by this rough way of grouping. Such information only becomes available after isolation and subsequent physiological studies. The time needed for collecting the limited amount of information is enormous and does not meet the required response for quality management. Even PCR detection, which is rapid in itself, still needs a time consuming pre-culturing step in order to meet the need for sensitivity.

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Tagged with: Frank Schuren, Jos van der Vossen, Roy Montijn, TNO Quality of Life

Responding to traceability needs

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Dr Robert Madge, President, IDtrack

Consumers fear the food they eat. These fears have grown as food production and processing has become more industrialised and food sources more distant. The scale and impact of food scares in recent years – from mad cow disease to dioxins and most recently Sudan I – have fuelled the situation.

These fears cannot simply be addressed by scientific argument, or by pointing to statistics that show food poisoning has been significantly reduced in the last 30 years. Consumers don’t believe they are being given the facts and are likely to react strongly – some say over-react – when they think that there is a problem.

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Tagged with: IDtrack, Robert Madge

The basis for a common approach

Issue 3 2005 / 29 July 2005 / Bo Boye Busk Jensen, FBE, BioCentrum-DTU, Hilde Cnossen, Jacques Kastelein, TNO Quality of Life and Roland Cocker, Cocker Consulting

Research continues in the area of hygienic engineering and design, particularly in innovative techniques using safe construction materials to develop functional as well as easily cleanable equipment for handling, processing and packing foodstuffs. This is the motivation behind the work of the European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group (EHEDG), which regularly publishes detailed guidelines and guidance on engineering aspects of food production.

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Tagged with: Bo Boye Busk Jensen, Cocker Consulting, EHEDG, Hilde Cnossen, Jacques Kastelein, Roland Cocker, TNO Quality of Life