It's well known that the structural characteristics of food materials influence their mass transfer, especially their water transfer properties during such processes as drying, hydration, and storage. In porous cereal-based products, for example, effective water diffusivity is highly affected by the volume fraction and distribution of both solid and gas phases, while in dense food materials, such as fat-based or other edible coatings, it depends on factors that affect the "tightness" of the molecular structure (e.g., free volume, cohesive energy density, crystallinity). This Brief will review...

This book examines food in the United States in the age of the Internet. One major theme running through the book is business opportunities and failures, as well as the harms to consumers and traditional brick-and-mortar companies that occurred as entrepreneurs tried to take advantage of the Internet to create online companies related to food. The other major theme is the concept of trust online and different models used by different companies to make their web presence seem trustworthy. The book describes a number of major food companies, including AllRecipes, Betty Crocker, Cook's...

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is responsible for around half of the total number of hepatitis infections diagnosed worldwide. HAV infection is mainly propagated via the fecal-oral route, and as a consequence of globalization, transnational outbreaks of foodborne infections are reported with increasing frequency. Therefore, in this review, state-of-the-art information on the molecular procedures for HAV detection in food, and the efficacy of common food manufacturing processes are compiled. The purpose of this Brief is to consolidate basic information on various aspects of HAV and to provide a...

The pore structure of foods directly affects the success of such food processes as drying, puffing, freeze-drying, and rehydration. Consequently, the pore structure of foods determines what types of food processes will work best with a particular food. This Brief will first discuss in depth the need to correctly measure the pore structure of foods and then will identify and describe in detail the current methods available to measure food porosity. Finally, it will review the applications of these various methods. ​

Health of the people is the most important indicator of the development of a nation. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (as defined by WHO). The state of health of an individual or population depends upon complex interaction of the physical, biological, political and social domains. The environment affects the human health in a big way. People tend to be most susceptible to illness when physically or mentally stressed. Stress, energy and immunity form a closely knit network. Through his experimental findings,...

Hepatitis E (HEV) is a viral infectious disease that infects humans and domestic, wild, and synanthropic animals alike. In developing countries, the disease often presents as an epidemic, transmitted primarily through the fecal-oral route. In recent years, sporadic cases have also been documented in industrial countries, including Europe. ​The identification and characterization of animal strains of HEV from pigs, wild boar, and deer, and the demonstrated ability of cross-species infection by these animal strains raise potential public health concerns for foodborne and zoonotic...

Sonocrystallization of Fats will summarize the latest research efforts and discoveries in the relatively new area of sonocrystallization of edible lipids. Ultrasound has been used extensively in the past to induce the crystallization of molecules. Until recently, however, very little work has been done using power ultrasound to induce the crystallization of edible lipids and understand how the phenomena applies in these systems. Power ultrasound is used in fats to induce their crystallization and to generate small crystals, which ultimately result in a harder material. Since the elimination...

Although widely recognized as an important waterborne pathogen, Giardia duodenalis can also be transmitted by contamination of food. The same properties of this protozoan parasite that mean that water is an excellent transmission vehicle are also important for foodborne transmission. These include the low infective dose, the high number of cysts that are excreted, and the robustness of these transmission stages. However, many more outbreaks of waterborne giardiasis have been reported than foodborne outbreaks. This is probably partly due to epidemiological tracing being much more difficult for...

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been applied extensively to great benefit in the food processing sector. Its numerous applications include: predicting the gas flow pattern and particle histories, such as temperature, velocity, residence time, and impact position during spray drying; modeling of ovens to provide information about temperature and airflow pattern throughout the baking chamber to enhance heat transfer and in turn final product quality; designing hybrid heating ovens, such as microwave-infrared, infrared-electrical or microwave-electrical ovens for rapid baking; model the...