GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) – This week on Tech Tuesday, UF Innovate officials will be talking with students from the University of Florida’s School of Food Science and Human Nutrition to explore what it takes to make food shelf-stable.
“Have you ever wondered how the food at the grocery store stays fresh?” asked Bethany Gaffey, a staff member at UF Innovate.
“It’s all about water,” she explained. “We’re here today to learn more with Alex Weaver, a recent graduate from the University of Florida’s School of Food Science and Human Nutrition. Can you tell us more about what goes on in this department?”
“The Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Florida is located within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,” the graduate explained.
“As the name suggests, it focuses on two things: food science and human nutrition. [In the the FSHN pilot plant,] Besides the desiccators, we also have fermenters, carbonators, blanchers and other food processing equipment, all aimed at teaching undergraduate and graduate students the value of food processing and how to make foods shelf stable and nutritious.”
“How does a desiccator remove moisture without compromising the quality of the food?” Gaffey asked.
“There are two types of water and food,” Weaver explained.
“There is bound water and there is free water. So when you heat a food or pass air through it that is less humid than the food, it becomes humid — its water activity — and water is removed from the food. Foods that you see on grocery store shelves typically have less than 30% moisture content, which means mold and bacterial growth is inhibited, and anything that needs moisture and nutrients to grow will thrive in a humid environment. So if you remove the moisture from a food, you have a shelf-stable product.”
“How is this desiccator different from previous models and from the first model this department had?”
“That’s a really good question, too. When Dr. McIntosh came to us, he had a pie-sized dryer that was about a foot and a half tall, and it could only hold a quarter to a kilogram, two hundred to a kilogram of food. So when he came to us, he asked if we could quadruple the capacity of that dryer and implement additional features like air heating, air pressure regulation, air flow regulation, so that he could run four separate experiments at once, so that he could have that additional capacity for students and researchers.”
“Thank you for joining us,” Gaffey said. “I hope you learned about the intersection of engineering and food processing, and I’ll see you next week for Tech Tuesday.”
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