Food Marketing & Technology - India June 2019 | Page 30

Processing
FOODSTUFF PRODUCTION
A culture of contradictions?
BY: HOLGER BRECHT *
A
gain and again consumers are
confronted with scandals in the
foodstuff industry. A recentt
case is the Fipronil egg scandal in the
laying hen farming in the Netherlands
and in Lower Saxony (Germany). What
actually do foodstuff producers and
marketers do to avoid such cases? A
lot, if you believe the rising costs in the
area of modern foodstuff analysis. So
during the last decades, always newer
and more sophisticated processes will
be and were developed with the most
sensitive detection thresholds (ELISA,
PCR or the mycotoxin analysis) for
quality control, in order to lower
the number or even eliminate such
scandals and the potential danger for
consumers. So now, in the context of
these analytical processes again and
again, methods for sample preparation
of the most diverse matrixes have
been developed. Because especially
food- stuffs and the raw materials,
respectively convenience products
are often composed clearly more
heterogeneous like all other substance
groups. Especially in regards to
comminution there are often limits
like the rheological properties of
a material, the ingredients or the
volatile components which can only
be prepared without regulating factors
(sieves). That’s why often knife mills
are utilized. FRITSCH now offers
such a knife mill in industry quality:
the Knife Mill PULVERISETTE 11.
In the following are examples of the
comminution of foodstuffs and their
backgrounds.
Fig. 3: Hard candy with liquid centre,
embrittled in nitrogen
Hopfen und Malz Gott erhalts
The above, traditional German
saying asks for God’s blessing for
hops and malt. Known and used as
a base material for the production of
beer shows hops much more diverse
pharmacological-effective aspects. So
many secondary plant substances like
humulene, caryophyllene, as well as
certain plant dyes contribute to the
anti-inflammatory or soothing effects
of hops. Possibly they contain species-
related mechanism of action to the
body’s own sleep hormone melatonin.
In order to examine this in detail and
to ensure a better extraction of these
ingredients, fresh female hop cones
were comminuted and homogenized
in the PULVERISETTE 11 at 4,000 rpm
for 15 seconds.
Fig. 1: Hop cones before and after the comminution
Fig 4: Comminuted hard candy after 20 seconds
Mandatory labelling of sweets
In order to identify vitamins or other
ingredients of fruit flavored hard candy
according to the mandatory product
labelling, usually the candy must be
mechanically processed. The often
utilized HPLC requires only weighted
samples of a few milligrams though, in
which a realistic random distribution
Fig. 2: Hops milled at 4,000 rpm, grinding time 15 seconds
Food Marketing & Technology
30
June 2019