Food Chemistry, Nutrition and Safety

Year by year, more and more of the food we eat is processed - canned, frozen, dehydrated, smoked, or otherwise treated so that it can be conserved. Consumers are already well aware of the importance of retaining the vitamin content in stored and processed foods. But now it is beginning to demand similar progress toward making these foods more palatable by incorporating flavor chemistry in food science.

As a result, research programs are being set up with the sole objective of studying one of the most important constituents of our daily food-flavor. Plant physiologists, agricultural scientists, food industries, nutritionists, and medical workers are engaged in this work. They mean to find out what processes are involved in food ripening, how flavor is formed, how it behaves during processing, how it stands up 'under storage and marketing conditions, and how it can be improved.