Under Pressure: Novel Technologies Are Preserving Food & Extending Shelf Life

By Tatiana Koutchma Ph.D., Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

The key advantages of elevated pressures present an attractive and powerful tool to implement processing of food products and beverages at mild and ambient temperatures. However, many food processors don’t necessarily know that different types of pressure specifications and applications may lead to different microbial inactivation effects. In addition to well-known pressure homogenization and hydrostatic pressure processing, there are a few other pressure-based techniques that can be used for different categories of products in food preservation operations. Do you want to pasteurize or sterilize? Do you simply want to extend shelf life? What about added value? Here’s what you need to know about food preservation under elevated pressures.

First of all, there is a broad range of processing pressures that has been already tested through different approaches. Summary of available pressure-based preservation techniques, the range of their processing parameters and applications is presented in Table 1.