Consumer attitudes and perceptions towards chilled ready-to-eat foods: a multi-national study.

Understanding consumers' behavior and their handling of high-risk foods at home is essential for reducing the number of foodborne illnesses. This study shows the results of a cross-national analysis of consumers' perception from nine countries, and the identification of customers' clusters and its characteristics in order to understand customers' behavior, and to build safe chilled ready-to-eat (RTE) foods prevention strategies. The cluster analysis resulted in two clusters: (1) "Precautious consumers" characterized by the orientation towards pre-packed RTE foods, with consumers mainly coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. Their attitudes and self-reported practices may be categorized as less risky in terms of food-borne illnesses connected with the consumption of RTE foods; (2) "Unconcerned consumers" preferred cutting and slicing RTE foods freshly at the point of purchase, usually sold at the delicatessen department in a supermarket or at open markets. Those consumers mostly came from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia and their attitudes and self-reported practices were riskier. These results allow a better understating of what characterizes consumers of RTE foods in different countries.

Evaluation of kinetic parameters in prevention of quality loss in stored almond pastes with added natural antioxidant.

Oxidative stability and loss of nutritional values during storage are the major problems that are encountered in the nut spreads and nut pastes affecting the commercial value. In this study, kinetic behavior of lipid oxidation and depletion of the phenolic antioxidants in the black carrot juice supplemented almond pastes stored at the temperature range of 4-60 °C were studied. Kinetic models were employed to quantify the observations. Lipid oxidation was modeled with the logistic equation. Addition of black carrot juice delayed lipid oxidation, and decreased the maximum peroxide value attained. Being different than the results of the previous studies performed with the similar pastes, the rate constants of peroxide formation reactions in the black carrot juice supplemented pastes decreased with increasing temperature (from 0.60 to 0.27 d-1); possibly due to capturing of the lipid oxidation intermediaries by the antioxidants at higher rates at higher temperatures. Depletion of phenolics agreed with a unimolecular first order apparent kinetic model. At the end of the storage period, phenolic losses in the pastes were 5.4, 31.8, 36.9 and 38.2% at 4, 20, 30 and 60 °C, respectively. The results showed that incorporation of the black carrot juice might have an effect on the mechanism of the lipid oxidation and its temperature dependency, and improve the shelf life of the almond pastes.

General Template for the FMEA Applications in Primary Food Processing.

Data on the hazards involved in the primary steps of processing cereals, fruit and vegetables, milk and milk products, meat and meat products, and fats and oils are compiled with a wide-ranging literature survey. After determining the common factors from these data, a general FMEA template is offered, and its use is explained with a case study on pasteurized milk production.

Improvement of the safety of the red pepper spice with FMEA and post processing EWMA quality control charts.

Although there are numerous decades-old studies drawing attention to the presence of aflatoxins in spices, and particularly in red pepper spice, the problem has not been eradicated. In the present study, information presented in the literature, about production method of red pepper spice, its contamination with aflatoxin, and the uncertainty about the data are assessed to find out the points where improvement may be achieved. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) are performed to assess the risk. The highest total risk attributable to chemical plus physical plus biological causes is associated with the washing stage (RPN=363), which is followed by the receiving (RPN=342) and the storage (RPN=342) stages. The highest risk attributable to biological causes (RPN=180) is associated with microbial growth and aflatoxin production due to insufficient control of drying conditions. The highest chemical risk (RPN=144) is found for the presence of unintentional food additives, such as pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and heavy metals in fresh red pepper fruits. EWMA (exponentially weighted average) charts are employed to monitor aflatoxin production during storage. They successfully distinguished between the batches, which turned to be unsafe. Risk associated with unintentional additives may be reduced by using certified additives only. Better drying control will definitely reduce the risk associated with the drying process. Codex Alimentarius plan has worldwide acceptance for assessing safety of the nuts. Risk of accepting the batches contaminated with aflatoxin may be eliminated by applying the Codex Alimentarius sampling plan before putting the dry pulverized red pepper into the storage facility.