Abstract
Thermal processing is a most commonly used method for extending the shelf ｌｉｆe oｆ processed food. The heat ｓｔｅrilization of foods in cans or retortable pouches has been conducted conventionally by heating the food container in a pressurized stem or hot-water retort at predetermined temperature and time. Although this process will certainly make microorganism and spores inactive, it may cause destruction of essential nutrients that leads to deterioration of product quality.
Under these circumstances the significant point is to find out the condition for the maximum nutrient or quality retention as well as the sufficient bacterial reduction required for stable and safe products.
For this purpose, ｉｔ ｉs ｖｉｔａllｙ important to find out the optimum temperature profile and its effect on product quality.
With ａ view to predict the effect of various temperature profiles with an equal sterilizing value on quality retention, a model was constructed to simulate the thermal processing of foods packed in retortable pouches. Five types of retort temperature proｆｉｌes were selected that are conventionally used in thermal processing of food industry.
This paper presents an optimum report temperature profile obtained by computer simulation. It was found that a trapezoid-type temperature profile is the best one among these five types of profiles
