AN OUTLINE TO COURSES OF FOOD TECHNOLOGY

AN OUTLINE TO COURSES OF FOOD TECHNOLOGY

Food Technology is known as the emerging field due to its importance in everyday life. The remarkable society needs qualified and trained personnel in the fields of food processing, Quality Assurance, Food Safety, Sensory Analysis, Food Chemistry, Food Analysis, Food Laws, Food Engineering, Food Packaging, Processing, and Product Development. Each one of these subjects act as kind of job orientation and throughout your food career, you can kind of choose which subject you would like to follow as a career prospective. For example, you can choose to be Quality Assurance Manager, a Sensory Scientist, a Flavour Chemist, or a Product Developer all with a B Tech. Food Technology degree Courses.

   Fruits and vegetable Processing: the objective of this course is basic & applied research work and development in the area of fruits & vegetable for minimising wastage, maintaining quality and imparting convenience and value addition. study of pre & post-harvest technologies for extension of storage life and better handling & transportation of fresh fruits and vegetables to sustain freshness & reduce spoilage. In basic classes, you learn how to dehydrate, refrigerate, and pretty much boil water but in more advanced classes, we learn the science of how freeze drying, microwaves, and extrusion works.

 Quality Assurance: Where we make sure that the processes and ingredients we use to make food are in compliance with the government and with the consumer. You will learn what’s really needed in the food industry to make sure your food is consistent and edible.

Food Microbiology & Safety: Food microbiology plays an important role in food safety, production, processing, preservation, and storage. Basically concern with how to prevent food outbreaks. We hear all the time on how E.coli or Listeria can cause massive recalls. Food Safety classes are designed on how we can keep our food safe, which is the most important thing you have to think about when making food and distributing it to millions. Food outbreaks can kill a food company.

Sensory Analysis: Literally a class where you eat things all day. Applying statistics, you will learn about how to find if results between different tasting products are significant or not. We use sensory analysis a lot in the food industry because people have to actually like the taste of the food that is being sold. We also use sensory to replace ingredients, for example, if this organic version can match the original version, or if this new flavour is better than this old one.

    

Food Chemistry & Nutrition: Chemistry of food constituents describes analytical methods for determining qualitative and quantitative nutrients. Basically applying what you know about biochemistry and using it on food. The reaction occurs during processing, losses of nutrients, utilization of nutrients and biomolecule. In this class, you understand how things get thick when you add flour to soup, why you should coat biscuits with oil before packaging, and why some sugars are super sticky and why some are rock solid.

 Food Analysis: Here, you understand how to use machines and chemicals to break down food to its basic components and measure its content. This is used extensively with nutrition labelling on your little nutrition facts on every food product.

 Food Laws & Regulations :  Through this course you will be introduced to the national and international food laws and regulations governing food trade. Here you will learn about the FDA, FSSAI, WTO, Agmark, Codex as well as knowing the regulations it takes to slap on a label for food products. Things you would never notice has to be on the package such as: net weight, manufacturing date, and what fonts to use on the label.

Food Engineering:  Food engineering is a rapidly changing discipline. It’s basically using very basic engineering concepts to help you do your job. the main fields within the discipline such as thermal and non-thermal stabilization processes, separation and isolation processes, chemical and biochemical conversions, mixing and structuring processes.

Some examples of applying food engineering is: measuring the expansion of water when frozen in orange juice concentrates, how much you have to adjust the amount of water when switching to a more watery syrup, and how many ingredients you need to add back in when your professor accidentally spills part of your incomplete mixture of barbeque sauce.

   

Food Packaging: Why do we package food? To keep it safe, contained, and as a wicked marketing tool. You also learn about how paper, glass, metal and plastic are made and why they are so versatile.

Product Development: You make your own product using all of the skills you learned in your previous class. Product Development is the sum of scientific practices that lead us to the discovery of new and improved products in the most effective and efficient manner. The intension of this course is discovery of new and improved innovative food products.

 Food Business Management: As a student in Food Business Management, you will study food from a scientific perspective and the food industry from a business point of view. With idea to produce food with business mind set up, so as to have new emerging entrepreneurs in this sector. All national and international trends and emerging facts of this industry, authorities governing food safety and regulation is studied.

  Emerging trends in Food Technology  

    

• Increased concern about the nutritional content of technologically derived, refined foods is expressed by both consumers and nutritionists.
• Dietary guidelines and nutrition education focus on partially replacing refined foods with whole grains, legumes, and other foods which retain their biochemical unity.
•  Concern about food safety issues is very strong. Food scientists are responding to these nutritional and safety concerns in a variety of ways.
• Increased attention to food interactions and bio-availability of nutrients.
•  Improved analytical and detection methods, and research and education in food safety.
• New product development, particularly in the area of reduced-fat and reduced-calorie products is predicted. New processing technologies such as high energy electric pulse processing, freeze concentration, and hydro-static pressure processing show promise.
•  Biotechnology is a growing area.

   

    Authors- Prof. Sharda Patekar, Prof. Shashikiran Hingade