In addition, consumer aversion to traditional chemical preservatives has left food processors with less flexibility in choosing preservation methods. To find a technologic edge in the marketplace, food processors are exploring new processing and preservation technologies. Some of these technologies include ohmic heating, high-pressure, pulsed electric field, bright light, and aseptic processing. Ohmic heating involves passing an electric current through the food to create heat due to electrical resistance within the food. With ohmic heating, food particles heat at the same rate as the carrier medium or sauce.
Ohmic heating can enhance food quality by limiting heat damage to the sauce and food particles.
High-pressure processing uses very high pressure, often thousands of atmospheres, to pasteurize foods without heat. Pulsed electric field processing uses a very strong pulsed electric current to disrupt microbial cells and pasteurize foods with little or no heating. Aseptic processing dates back to at least the mid-1940s but has yet to realize its full potential. The most widely used of these new technologies, aseptic processing involves sterilizing a food product in a continuous process through a heat exchanger and then filling that food in an aseptic filler. The aseptic filler is a highly specialized piece of equipment designed to sterilize the packaging material, fill the sterile product into its container in a sterile environment, and then seal the package.