Food manufacturing or processing is the set of methods used to transform components into meals or perhaps change the form of the food itself. Examples of these techniques can include:
Drying
Salting
Canning
Fortifying
Preserving
Cooking
Freezing
How butchered animal products or harvested crops are utilized to produce marketable food products are examples of food production, as is how ready meals, that then have to be re-heated before eating, are produced.
Advantages and Disadvantages
There are both benefits and disadvantages of food production. Some of the most apparent benefits include…
Improved taste of the food
Extended seasonal availability
Extended shelf-life
By way of example, vegetables and Rose Fanta Search can only be chosen when they are ripe, however if they are frozen or canned they keep longer. The more shelf lives reduce food waste and perishable foods are now able to be hauled to wider areas.
Manufacturing the food also makes them safer, decreasing incidences of disease brought on by eating the food – for instance, a lot of farm-based products can contain potentially deadly microorganisms but the manufacturing process will remove them. Processed food can also cater to the needs of people who suffer from certain allergies.
Among the biggest drawbacks with food manufacturing is that there’ll be a large effect on the nutritional density of the food item as it has been demonstrated that, although it varies from product to product, as much as a fifth of those nutrients could be lost.
A good instance of how a nutrient may be lost is warmth destroying the material of Vitamin C in canned fruit. The production procedure adds unhealthy ingredients to boost taste and a high consumption rate of those products may cause an individual’s taste buds to dull as for example they become used to the flavor of refined sugar. The large calorie content of the manufactured food, especially given the absence of nutrients, may result in obesity.
If the food production industry ceased to exist, there could be benefits with an absence of junk food, a decrease in obesity levels causing a healthier population with less associated illness like diabetes and heart disease and there would also be a reduction in pollution levels from fertilisers and pesticides.
However there would be a considerably reduced food source, a possible increase in infectious diseases, the supermarkets because we know them would no longer exist and the result would be dull diets and possibly famine. As we’ve seen that there are two sides into the food production narrative and it is all about getting the balance right.