APPLICABILITY OF THE SHELF LIFE DECISION SYSTEM (SLDS) FOR CONTROL OF NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FROZEN VEGETABLES

The final quality of optimally processed frozen food products depends on the temperature conditions of storage, handling and distribution, that often deviate from recommended.
Despite the stability accomplished by proper frozen storage, the loss of nutritional parameters, such as Vitamin C for green vegetables is significant, due to the improper temperature conditions from its manufacture to the final consumption.
The necessary constant monitoring and control of the real chill chain is achieved by Time Temperature Integrators(TTI) and can help the determination of the shelf-life of such products.
The intelligent Shelf Life Decision System (SLDS), which aims at the optimization of the stock-rotation policy, integrates predictive kinetic models of food spoilage, data on initial vitamin C content of different batches of frozen vegetables, and the capacity to obtain the full temperature history of the food product with TTI. This effective chill chain management tool leads to a narrower distribution of nutritional quality at consumption time, reducing the probability of products consumed past shelf life end.

II International Symposium on Application of Modelling as an Innovative Technology in the Agri-Food Chain; MODEL-IT

M.C. Giannakourou, K. Koutsoumanis, E. Dermesonlouoglou, P.S. Taoukis

Frozen vegetables, ascorbic acid, TTI, Monte Carlo simulation, SLDS

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2001.566.34