Impact of Freezing on Food Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Impact of Freezing on Food - Essay ExampleWhile nourishment preserved in legion(predicate) home freezers are held at -10C, commercial freezers are under -18C (0 degrees Fahrenheit). semipermanent frost for commercial purpose requires a constant temperature of -18 C or less. At this low temperature, the harvesting of micro-organisms is more or less stopped. Deteriorative microbial reactions will still make it, but over a lots longer time. In addition, deteriorative enzymatic reactions will still take place during crisp storage (Omafra stave n. pag. 2005).Though freezing is an effective method of nutrient preservation, freezing tidy sum adversely affects the food grain of many foods. It should be noted that the texture of nearly all foods is damaged by thawing and re-freezing. It is also classical to understand the technology behind freezing. Since water system expands when it freezes, cell walls in food specially fruits and vegetables having high water content are often rupt ured, resulting in food that is limp or pulpy when thawed. The high amylum content in some of the vegetables reduces such damage. Besides less damage is also done if the food is frozen immediately. Hence unfrozen food should be placed in the coldest areas in the refrigrator (Wikipedia n.pag. 2007).Freezing has been a key technology in bringing convenience foods to homes and restaurants. It causes minimal changes in the caliber of food in terms of size, shape, texture, color, flavor and microbial load. This is assuming that the freezing process is carried out properly. A key component during food freezing is how fast-flying we freeze. When food is frozen slowly, the ice crystals formed will be grand these large ice crystals are undesirable as they will damage the cell structure especially the non-vegetarian foods like meat and fish. Hence ice formation will result in poor texture and excessive dripping upon thawing. Frozen food must be maintained at the proper temperature at all times. For instance if we take the case of ice creams, it is very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. In cases of temperature fluctuation, it can cause a defect called sandy texture and the ice cream will in fact taste grainy, as if it contained come kind of granules. These granules are nothing but lactose crystals which naturally occur in milk that is generally dissolved. Temperature fluctuation, however, will cause lactose to crystallize out, imparting sandiness (Institute of Food Technologists n.pag 2005).thither are also studies that have done comparative studies on muscle from fresh (unfrozen) and freshly frozen chickens. The results showed that freezing caused small, but detectable changes in eating quality and also that these changes in muscle proteins during freezing depended on freezing rate. Slow freezing resulted in a larger loss of drip on thawing, a larger loss of nitrogenous constituents and nucleic acid derivatives to the drip, and a larger loss of water-holdin g capacity of meat, than fast freezing. Besides, slow freezing, as compared to fast freezing, increased proteolysis and caused a greater decrease in the adenosine-triphosphatase (ATP) activity of myofibrillar proteins. In addition difference in taste was also noted. The results of this study suggest that rapid freezing conserves the integrity of muscle proteins to a greater extent than slow freezing and there by the quality of fo