COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HEAT-TREATED ORANGE JUICE

One of the main concerns when it comes to produce foodstuff is to guarantee the consumer’s safety, preserving at the same time the original nutritive and organoleptic characteristics of the product. With the purpose of extending foodstuffs shelf life, a lot of products are thermally treated before they become commercialized. However, these thermal procedures are carried out in heating exchangers, which calls for a great deal of energy to produce the heat. Nowadays, new technologies like microwaves are being researched in order to be actual alternatives to the conventional treatments. However, the industrial application of microwave energy is still limited by the uncertainty of the energy dissipation and by the lack of information on reactions except for the thermal effects. Furthermore, the social opinion about the utilization of microwaves as a thermal treatment for foodstuff is not very favorable (Wayne and Newel, 2000; Wild, n/a). It is thought by a lot of people that the use of microwaves deteriorates the final quality of food and it consequently damages consumers’ health. This paper shows a research based on the application of microwaves to thermally treat orange juice, with the purpose of investigating the viability of the technology of microwaves on foodstuff.