Study of Moisture Transfer and Reaction Kinetics in Food Processing

Insufficient heating causes decreased digestibility, or increased growth of microorganisms while excessive heating (overcooking) not only impairs the usual texture, or eating-quality, of various food including starchy food and meat/fish meat, but also leads to the generation of hazardous factors such as acrylamide and heterocyclic amine. Consequently, it is important to describe various changes in the physical properties of food materials that occur during thermal processing, based on the heat transfer phenomenon in order to determine optimal values for heating. In this article, (1) study of moisture transfer and reaction in starchy food during cooking, and (2) reaction kinetics of thermal denaturation of protein are described.