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Fortification addresses nutritional loss during processing
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Wednesday, 31 July, 2024, 14 : 00 PM [IST]
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Nivetha S, S.Vignesh
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Introduction
Food and beverages (F&B) industries constitute one of the most exciting and interesting sectors today. It comprises the conversion of raw materials into finished goods. F&B industries undergo various steps involving raw material collection, processing, preservation, storage and distribution of food commodities. F&B industries involve the production and processing of meat, fruits and vegetables, dairy products, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
As per the report created by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Grant Thornton, India, is predicted to be ranked as fifth-largest consumer in the food and beverage consumption category by 2025. Hence, the F&B industry in India becomes a more profitable sector. Nearly two-thirds of India's retail market and about 3% of the nation's GDP depend on F&B industry. Between 2020 and 2024, it is anticipated that the F&B industry's revenue would increase at a common annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.2%. Further, it is forecasted that the market volume will be around US$1,264 for the year 2024. From 2018 to 2020, the total number of registered food and beverage production firms in India remained stable with minor fluctuations in their numbers.
The international trade administration (ITA) estimated that the F&B industry in China generated around US$595 billion in 2019 and it has been raised to 16% during the year 2021. There are total of 8,131 registered processing firms for food and 5,658 for beverages in China as per the data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.
In China, a total of 15,786 units of F&B industries were registered in 2018. Asia’s population is expected to increase 5.1 billion by 2050. Asian giants China and India are the largest countries in the world in terms of population. Population explosion creates the demand for processed food, which challenges the F&B industries to produce huge volumes of food commodities with adequate nutrition and safety.
Challenges and solutions
Prevention of nutrition losses during processing
Food processing is the process of converting the raw produce into value-added products. Food processing is the best method for extending the shelf life of food by killing the microorganism but it has an adverse effect on the nutritional quality of food and beverage. Loss of nutrition occurs during the processing, when the food is exposed to high heat, light and oxygen. The innovative techniques, which help to preserve the nutritional quality of the F&B, include High Pressure Processing (HPP), irradiation, ohmic heating, pulsed electromagnetic technique, osmotic dehydration. Food fortification is one of the best practice to address nutritional loss during processing. Food fortification also helps in increasing the country’s economic dimension. Especially in India, the food fortification market reached nearly 1345.35 metric tonne in 2022, it is expected to reach a volume of 4139.24 metric tonne in the year of 2028.
Wastewater management
Water is an important source for food processing industries and the demand for water has been increasing globally. Water shortage is already a major concern in F&B industries and the reusage of wastewater will be a better solution to reduce water scarcity. Water usage in the beverage industry is more when compared to any other food industries. Before usage, the wastewater needs to be treated with several techniques that should be adopted. MBR (Membrane Bio Reactor) is a widely used method for wastewater treatment whereas the integration of nanomaterial with MBR will provide high-performance efficiency. Applications of nanomaterial in wastewater treatment have the greater advantage like accuracy, efficiency, less time consumption and low toxicity. Nanoparticles such as Zerovalent metal nanoparticle, zinc nanoparticle, iron nanoparticle, silver nanoparticle, and metal nanoparticle are promising tools for use in diverse wastewater management system. Several methods for wastewater treatment including Advanced Oxidation Process (AOPs), Photo catalysis, UV treatment, Ozone treatment, Automatic variable filtration, Fenton and osmotic hydrated techniques help to treat the wastewater for reuse.
Alternative for chemical preservative
There is a negative image among the public about the usage of chemical preservatives in F&B industries. Even-though the additives may add in the permissible limits, frequent consumption will lead to serve health effects. To overcome the problem, bioactive peptides employed in food preservation can extend the shelf life of the product through bacteriostasis and antioxidation. In addition, bioactive peptides are biodegradable and biocompatible considered as the best alternative to chemical preservatives. Natural preservative derived from the plants and animals can be the good substitute for chemical preservative. Non-thermal processing such as ultrasonication, cold plasma technology, irradiation, pulsed ultra violet technology, and ozone treatment considered as a beneficial alternative than chemical preservation.
Detection of Food Allergen
In terms of food safety, allergenic substance is considered as a major challenge, there are several emerging technologies that will help to minimise allergens including HPP, Ultrasound, High-Pressure Homogenisation, and Pulsed Electric Field. In addition, advanced tools like biosensor integrated with nanoparticles help to increase the detection level of allergens.
Detection and Prevention of Cross Contamination:
Population growth increases the demand of food and consumption. Therefore, food industries undergo handling of mass volume of food supply, which increases the chance of cross-contamination. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) assessment, approximately 600 million cases of food-borne illness are reported due to the consumption of contaminated food, which leads to 420,000 deaths per annum. The main source of contamination happens in food industries owing to microbial biofilm formation on the surface of the processing area. However, common laboratory detection methods such as agar plating are ineffective at the industrial level and molecular technologies such as qRT-PCR and more specific DNA amplifications became high cost effective. To overcome the cross-contamination during handling and processing of food commodities, the sensor named SCH (Hygiene control sensor) analyses the contamination in real-time and gives the count of colonies in that specific surface which helps reduce the risk and saves time when compared to the traditional method of sampling. Several methods which help in preventing biofilm formation on the food contact surface are Enzymatic disruption, bacteriophages, bacteriocin, Quorum sensing inhibitors (QSI) and several antimicrobial surface coating methods include Super hydrophobic antifouling coatings, antimicrobial agent-releasing coatings, contact-based antimicrobial coatings, and repulsion-based antifouling coatings also be used as an effective method to reduce contamination. Cross contamination also reduced by proper implementation of food processing operation like Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), prerequisite programmes (PRPs), Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), Clean In Place (CIP), Standard Sanitation Operating Procedures (SSOP).
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
To overcome the overall production and processing problems in F&B industries AI be the better solution. In recent years, the application of AI in the food industry has been increasing due to various benefits such as quality control, food safety, parameter analysis, sensory evaluation, drying of food, food classification. Different types of AI module, which are used in the food industries are ANN, fuzzy logic, expert system and machine learning. AI is typically employed for multi-spectral imaging-based quality grading and spoilage detection in food industries. Robotic arms developed by using AI, which can be the best alternative for labour in the wine and other beverage industry, for picking the bottle and placing it in the conveyor, which then transfer to the cleaning area and the filling and packing, which reducing the time consumption during the processing.AI helps in grading and sorting the food commodities. AI integrated with other devices like E-tongue, E-nose, near infrared spectroscopy has high performance efficiency.
Conclusion
F&B industries play a major role in the Asian food market. Population growth, food demand, food safety during handling and processing is the major concern in F&B industry. To compensate the demand for food, F&B industries forced to handle huge volume of production, while handling enormous production it needs to be dealt with several challenges, which questions the safety of the food. The above-mentioned solutions may help to overcome the challenges, which will ensure the safety and availability of food commodities to beat the population growth.
(The authors are from National Institute of Food Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management, Thanjavur. They can be reached at vignesh@iifpt.edu.in)
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