Category: Food Safety

According to dictionary, a food is any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth. Eating is one of the key nutrients that nourishes our body and keeps us strong and healthy and above all from illness. Nutrition is the most vital component of our body’s energy so we can be active in our daily activities. All parts of our body need it like digestion, maintaining a clean diet and maintaining a healthy body. According to Universidad Iberoamericana, nutrients provide energy or calories, promote the growth and maintenance of the body, regulate body processes.

Eating can be defined as the consumption of food and liquid to sustain life and to meet our body’s basic needs for growth, development, and function. It is important for us to eat healthy every day and it is also important that we eat safe. Food provides us with the nutrition and energy to build and grow our cells in the body, to be active to all and to be healthy, they have strength to work hard, to think easily and to learn easily. Foods are directly related to our body. Mental health because each fluid contains specific nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fat, etc. which is necessary for our physical and mental growth to flow properly. Food and water are one of importance and cannot be lost to our main source of nutrition and it also gives our body strength. But many of the foods we eat do not have as much nutritional value like junk foods. Until lead to health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. But these will be useless if we don’t give value of safety and the assurance of whether we are safe to eat. Therefore, you should choose healthy and balanced foods and make sure the food is clean and safe.

For me, if food is of great value to our lives, then the safety of our eating disorders can be greater if we are not careful. Food is the third most important thing for life after air and water. We all know that people who eat healthier foods, balance their diet and treat foods properly to avoid less infections and other possible illnesses. That is why it is important to know which combinations of foods and which one should consider in order to avoid. Food is important and we still know what to do and what to do to keep ourselves or our family free from any illness. Our health is important and we take care of it and it’s very important that we know a lot about safe eating. It is important that we know a lot about the disease we get from the foods we eat. There are all kinds of foods that can lead to health issues. In addition, we can also get sickness from improperly placed foods which can also contain bacteria due to incorrect food placement. Eating healthy is important for everyone to live a healthy life and if it is important for a person to be healthy it is also important that we eat well. But food if we do not make sure it is clean and safe daily. We need to be confident and knowledgeable when it comes to the security of our diet or diet and to reduce and prevent potential health problems.

As the days, months, years passes by food safety still remains as a serious question among producers and consumers. Extrusion is a processing technique which involves forcing material through a die. Widely applied in the food industry for shaping and texture, particularly with a view to modify the sensory properties (Properties that can be detected by the sensory organs. For foods, the term relates to the combination of concepts such as visual aesthetics, flavor, texture, astringency (the reaction infants give to sour taste) and aroma or smell of the resultant extruded foods. Foodborne illnesses are a major threat all around the world. Among every 6 people die due to food diseases. Since a long ago these diseases were traced in association with high-moisture food, however nowadays low-moisture food has also been hinted as a con. Low-moisture food cannot be framed as safe due to the absence of salmonella. Even a presence of one cell of salmonella in food at any level poses threat to its consumer. Due to increased number of breakouts arising from salmonella in low-moisture food, it is necessary to develop and validate a process which could assure to control the microbiological safety of the end products.

Extrusion is one of the most common processes used in industries. Defined as “a process in which material is pushed through an orifice or a die of a given shape, the pushing force is applied using a piston or a screw; in food application, screw extrusion is predominant” (Karwe, 1992).

It is a founding pillar to adding value to agriculture and is known to bring more to the industry. It is known to use several unit operations which contains kneading, mixing, cooking, shearing, forming and shaping. The HTST (high temperature short time) has been known since long to reduce enzymatic activities, microbial population and reduces anti-nutrition factors, resulting in products that are low in water activity and reduces salmonella in high-moisture food at a temperature above 85 degrees Celsius. The requirements contain certain variables that are as follows; feed humidity, feed constituents, input size and shape, vessel temperature, rotation of screws, die dimensions and the configuration of the setup. There are many studies related to high-moisture food, but when it comes to low-moisture food, there are fewer studies. When it comes to validation an adequate surrogate becomes necessary for inactivation of pathogens. An adequate surrogate is must while assisting large scale validation study for low-moisture food.

Low-moisture food has been considered safe till date and was not the talk of town in terms of food safety as they don’t possess an environment that could shelter diseases. Low-moisture food contains some types of food that do not require cooking for consumption like-dry fruits and some type of food that are ready to eat. But the real question is whether the low-moisture food is safe? In past few years, the combination of low-moisture foods with pathogens has attracted the attention of the scientific community and regulations. Based on all the information present regarding Salmonella and low-moisture foods, it becomes clear need for an industry to validate processing areas so as to ensure the safety of foods and consumers.

The need of consumers increases with advancement in knowledge of microbiology and revelations about microbiological pathogens and hence the requirement of microbiological safety of food products. Many of the common foods such as chips, fries, nuggets, and most breakfast cereals are generally recognized as safe to consume as the condiments are exposed to high temperature treatment (>130 degree Celsius), the water activity is also low, that is 0.1-0.4. And so was proven that many yeasts and molds are terminated under simple processing.

The food industry is always inventing solutions and new process methods to resolve upcoming issues. There are various units in an industry to ensure the safety of the food among which is an exclusive unit of extrusion. Extrusion is every charmed process in food and feed industry; it’s a process that combines cooking, mixing, kneading, forming and shaping. The sole purpose of extrusion is to cook, to change or to create texture, to reduce microbial hazards and to inactivate bacteria. There exist various types of extrusion such as cold, hot or thermal extrusions. With the new insights studies could be conducted in support of extrusion related methods to reduce the threats present in low as well as high moisture food.

Salmonella is the name of a generic bacteria isolated by Dr. A. E. Salmon in the year 1885. It is a rod-shaped bacterium, which is gram-negative in nature. They are generally present on nearly all raw foods, including eggs, oilseeds, and sausages etc. It induces an illness called salmonellosis.

There are some 11 commonly recognized factors that determine the death of microorganisms and their death. They are as follows pH levels, phase of growth in organisms, nitrogen content, carbohydrates, salts, lipids, water activity, size of colony, inhibitory compounds, heat, and time. The Thermal Death Time (TDT) is the most significant procedure while extrusion and is necessary for the reduction of Salmonella and some other microorganisms. TDT is defined as “the time necessary to kill a given number of organisms at a specified temperature”. Furthermore, death is defined as “the inability of the organisms to form a visible colony”.

A handful of studies have been ever conducted to evaluate the effect of extrusion on Salmonella sp. or on similar organisms, a study depicted that when high moisture foods were extruded it completely eradicated Salmonella provided the temperatures were “93.3 to 176.8 degree Celsius”, and the moisture content was no more than 35% and also not less than 25%.

As a conclusion we can see that the possibilities of Salmonella to relapse is still present by a small percentage, therefore it is safe to say that quite a lot of research is needed into this specific topic, and also it is necessary to get rid of Salmonella from food products so we may enjoy a safe life. Also, a part of information to be kept in mind that Salmonella sp. are very adaptive in nature and can adapt to the chemicals and heat treatment provided to exterminate them, hence we should always be cautious while conducting sanitary practices and ensure that machinery is also sanitized. These healthy practices lead to lesser chances of bacterial infection/contamination.

References

1. Jideani, Afam. (2014). Extrusion Bolsters Food Security in Africa.
2. IJISET – International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 2 Issue 4, April 2015.
3. Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 75, No. 9, 2012, Pages 1646–1653
4. IFT Report to FDA – 2000, Vol. 2, 2003 COMPREHENSIVE REVIEWS IN FOOD SCIENCE AND FOOD SAFETY.

The Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906 under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and was the first of its kind in the gradual process of enactment of consumer rights and protection laws. Long before the first legitimate interventions of the government in consumer industries, companies had free reign on everything they produced and how they produced it. Their corporate interests superseded the wants, needs, health, and welfare of the consumer base well into every consumer industry from meats and liquors to drugs and medicines. Thus was born, the necessity for regulation and overseeing from the federal level. Enter FDA.

The preceding elements and ideals of the substance of the act seem to have picked up steam exponentially within the wide frame of time, before the progressive era. Argued upon grounds ranging from morality to general health naturally; the eventual demand for pure consumer goods was true to the times, progressive. A concern of Congress since the 1840s, it wasn’t until these such times in the relatively early days of the progressive era that both officials and the populace began to take significant notice. By then, however, there were unprecedented accounts/cases of ailments and fatalities as a product of tainted goods. Fueled by the desire for change, Upton Sinclair went on to publish “The Jungle”, which served as the final domino in the fight for pure foods and medicines; informing the lower masses of the transgressions of the relative meat packing industry in such a way whereby past muckraker journalists had failed. An example of his fine and guttural eloquence is as follows;

“- preventable diseases kill off half our population. And even if science were allowed to try, it could do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish. For this reason, I would seriously maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of less importance than the application of the knowledge we already possess when the disinherited of the earth have established their right to human existence.”[footnoteRef:0] [0: ]

Lest us forget a more notorious quote, describing the grotesque reality of sanitation failure, or lack thereof, in the plants;

“This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one– there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there.”

Upon arrival and thereafter throughout, Sinclair’s publication triggers public outrage (directed toward the subject matter, meat packing plants), in turn, substantial enough to garner the now-full attention of Congress to act in the name and the welfare of the people. Finally. In the motions of the act, yet to be set into law by President Roosevelt; Representative James Mann of Illinois delivers a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 21, 1906; a testament to his dismay with the consumer goods industries. A portion of the speech is as follows;

“I have here . . . several adulterated articles. Here is a bottle of cherries, originally picked green, so that they might be firm, with the green color all taken out with acid until they were perfectly white, and then colored with an aniline dye which is poisonous in any quantity.”

Representative James Mann’s speech left a strong impression on his peers and was deemed a leading proponent of the act by many reporters and outlets.

The Food and Drug Act came into action not too long after, thence laying the foundations for the FDA — the primary consumer protection agency in the U.S. Although bribery and other forms of corruption are ever prevalent (as always), the FDA remains a government entity and thus, just a tad bit less likely to be completely bought out, as is the fate that befalls privatized third-party agencies doing federal standard work. Nonetheless, the act serves as a bastion in itself, perhaps unappreciated now in today’s sociocultural plane; though ever prevalent in overarching influence on how society’s consumer goods come to be. The Food and Drug Act in itself has been a developing system of superimposed processes and regulations relative to the dynamic nature of society, thus consumer goods; deriving from the initial accuracy-based (morally right and all, y’know) labeling system and sprawling well into the systematic banning of thousands of practices and additives (unless of course you’re rich and line some pockets).

Historically relative to the U.S., acts and amendments of this nature typically stem from noble intentions and with necessary reform in mind, however, the substance of these legal and de jure constructs are equally as malleable to the will of negative intent and corruption such as (classic) corporate interests, profit insurance, and in this case; possibly social culling. Good old Darwinian ambition runs amok. Regardless, however, we all yet live, save for the fluoride in our brains, heavy metals in our vaccines, goitrogens in our fruits, and pesticides in our vegetables.

It beats rat-infused beef.

Bibliography List:

• Sinclair, Uptown. The Jungle. Pg 162. Grosset & Dunlap, 1999.
• Sinclair, Uptown. The Jungle. Pg 410. Grosset & Dunlap, 1999
• “The Pure Food and Drug Act.” U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/congress-and-progressive-era/pure-food-and-drug-act.

The Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906 under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and was the first of its kind in the gradual process of enactment of consumer rights and protection laws. Long before the first legitimate interventions of the government in consumer industries, companies had free reign on everything they produced and how they produced it. Their corporate interests superseded the wants, needs, health, and welfare of the consumer base well into every consumer industry from meats and liquors to drugs and medicines. Thus was born, the necessity for regulation and overseeing from the federal level. Enter FDA.

The preceding elements and ideals of the substance of the act seem to have picked up steam exponentially within the wide frame of time, before the progressive era. Argued upon grounds ranging from morality to general health naturally; the eventual demand for pure consumer goods was true to the times, progressive. A concern of Congress since the 1840s, it wasn’t until these such times in the relatively early days of the progressive era that both officials and the populace began to take significant notice. By then, however, there were unprecedented accounts/cases of ailments and fatalities as a product of tainted goods. Fueled by the desire for change, Upton Sinclair went on to publish “The Jungle”, which served as the final domino in the fight for pure foods and medicines; informing the lower masses of the transgressions of the relative meat packing industry in such a way whereby past muckraker journalists had failed. An example of his fine and guttural eloquence is as follows;

“- preventable diseases kill off half our population. And even if science were allowed to try, it could do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish. For this reason, I would seriously maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of less importance than the application of the knowledge we already possess when the disinherited of the earth have established their right to human existence.”[footnoteRef:0] [0: ]

Lest us forget a more notorious quote, describing the grotesque reality of sanitation failure, or lack thereof, in the plants;

“This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one– there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there.”

Upon arrival and thereafter throughout, Sinclair’s publication triggers public outrage (directed toward the subject matter, meat packing plants), in turn, substantial enough to garner the now-full attention of Congress to act in the name and the welfare of the people. Finally. In the motions of the act, yet to be set into law by President Roosevelt; Representative James Mann of Illinois delivers a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 21, 1906; a testament to his dismay with the consumer goods industries. A portion of the speech is as follows;

“I have here . . . several adulterated articles. Here is a bottle of cherries, originally picked green, so that they might be firm, with the green color all taken out with acid until they were perfectly white, and then colored with an aniline dye which is poisonous in any quantity.”

Representative James Mann’s speech left a strong impression on his peers and was deemed a leading proponent of the act by many reporters and outlets.

The Food and Drug Act came into action not too long after, thence laying the foundations for the FDA — the primary consumer protection agency in the U.S. Although bribery and other forms of corruption are ever prevalent (as always), the FDA remains a government entity and thus, just a tad bit less likely to be completely bought out, as is the fate that befalls privatized third-party agencies doing federal standard work. Nonetheless, the act serves as a bastion in itself, perhaps unappreciated now in today’s sociocultural plane; though ever prevalent in overarching influence on how society’s consumer goods come to be. The Food and Drug Act in itself has been a developing system of superimposed processes and regulations relative to the dynamic nature of society, thus consumer goods; deriving from the initial accuracy-based (morally right and all, y’know) labeling system and sprawling well into the systematic banning of thousands of practices and additives (unless of course you’re rich and line some pockets).

Historically relative to the U.S., acts and amendments of this nature typically stem from noble intentions and with necessary reform in mind, however, the substance of these legal and de jure constructs are equally as malleable to the will of negative intent and corruption such as (classic) corporate interests, profit insurance, and in this case; possibly social culling. Good old Darwinian ambition runs amok. Regardless, however, we all yet live, save for the fluoride in our brains, heavy metals in our vaccines, goitrogens in our fruits, and pesticides in our vegetables.

It beats rat-infused beef.

Bibliography List:

• Sinclair, Uptown. The Jungle. Pg 162. Grosset & Dunlap, 1999.
• Sinclair, Uptown. The Jungle. Pg 410. Grosset & Dunlap, 1999
• “The Pure Food and Drug Act.” U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/congress-and-progressive-era/pure-food-and-drug-act.