"Juice Box" Technology Wins Acclaim;
Other High-Tech Food Innovations Brewing
CHICAGO - Those "juice-boxes" that parents find so convenient and kids find so tasty have earned yet another accolade.
An expert panel on food safety and nutrition has ranked the aseptic packages and the process behind them as the most significant food science innovation of the last 50 years.
Safe canning of vegetables and the development of the microwave oven finished second and third, respectively, on the panel's list of the Top 10 Food Science Innovations since 1939. The Institute of Food Technologists panel and IFT Fellows developed the list in connection with the scientific society's 50th anniversary celebration this month.
Other top innovations announced by IFT President Theodore P. Labuza included frozen concentrated citrus juices, controlled-atmosphere packaging for fresh fruits and vegetables, freeze drying, frozen meals, improved understanding of water activity in foods, nutrient fortification, and pasteurization of dairy products through ultra-high temperatures.
"These innovations have helped to ensure healthier eating, and also to reduce food bills significantly," said Dr. Fergus M. Clydesdale, chairman of the IFT panel and head of the food science department at the University of Massachusetts.
"The death rate from heart disease has declined 20 percent, and the death rate from strokes has fallen more than 30 percent during the last 20 years, due in part to more nutritious food choices," Clydesdale said.
Processed foods, he added, now account for only three of every 100 food-poisoning cases. Of the remainder, 77 percent stem from foodservice preparation, and 20 percent occur at home.
Meanwhile, advances in food technology have contributed heavily to a 50 percent reduction in food bills as a proportion of disposable income during the last 50 years, Clydesdale said.
Among innovations that didn't make the Top 10 but merited mention by the panel were polyunsaturated corn oil margarine; fat hydrogenation; high-fructose corn syrup; aspartame; and extruded food technology.
The Top 10 innovations have moved the food industry into a new era in which microbiology and biotechnology will play major roles in nutrition, food safety, and disease prevention; the robotics and superconductivity will enable processors to increase efficiency and to limit production costs, he said.
Helping the public understand the applications and benefits of new technology will be a key challenge for food scientists and processors during the next 50 years, Clydesdale said. "Education is the critical component in spawning scientific achievement, and it will only flourish with support from a scientifically literate population," he said.
However, financial support for food technology research at U.S. universities has been declining at the federal, state and industrial levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in fact, doesn't specify any funds for such efforts, Clydesdale said.
The Top 10 list includes many innovations developed overseas, a trend he finds disturbing. Unless government and the food industry unite to increase research support, "IFT might not see another 50 years, and the U.S. will cease to be a leader in food technology," he said.
Aseptic processing and packaging is the most conspicuous non-U.S. innovation. It involves a high-temperature/short-time (HTST) treatment in which flowable products are heated quickly to a temperature at which sterilization occurs. The product then is cooled and placed into sterile containers.
In the United States, the technology has been used primarily for the production of fruit juices in flexible packages or brick-style containers known as "juice boxes." Compared with traditional canning techniques, the aseptic process allows a substantial reduction in the time and temperature necessary for sterilization. That, in turn, increases nutrient retention and flavor while ensuring safety.
Similar benefits have accrued from minimum safe canning processes for vegetables, microwave ovens, and most of the other innovations on the Top 10 list, Clydesdale said. [Editors: SEE FACT SHEETS FOR DETAILS ABOUT EACH INNOVATION.] "The discovery and utilization of scientific principles in food technology have provided a supply of safe, wholesome and nutritious food unknown before in history," he said.
Nevertheless, scientists identify microorganisms, such as the salmonella and listeria bacteria, and naturally occuring toxicants, such as aflatoxin, as their chief concerns as the food industry enters the home stretch toward the 21st century.
Research suggests that crop-plaguing natural toxicants can cause cancer. "They are very frightening," said Dr. Manfred Kroger, professor of food science at the Pennsylvania State University. "They are biological, chemical warfare agents generated by Mother Nature...What we need for the future is not a detection system that takes a days, but one that instantly waves a flag in the warehouse or on the store shelf."
Kroger expects that techniques will be developed within the next 20 years to detect extremely low levels of mold toxins in foods. Clydesdale, meanwhile, predicts that food processors eventually will use genetic probes to conduct online testing for microorganisms.
He also believes biotechnology will be used to create "biosensors" on packaging that will indicate freshness and safety, and to create plants and animals with customized characteristics. "We will have to deal with the host of scientific, ethical and educational problems that will provide some of the greatest challenges food scientists have ever met," he said.
More foods will be nutritionally complete, and researchers will develop an array of similar foods with differing caloric contents, he predicted. "Customized mass production must be our aim in the 21st century," he said.
Within the next 50 years, for example, processors will couple pharmacology and food science to offer products that address specific consumer needs, Kroger said. He foresees a breakfast cereal "that has a birth-control tablet and an aspirin table built in," and Clydesdale envisions the addition of appetite suppressants to diet foods.
"Scientists also may isolate the factors in food that enhance bodily absorption of minerals, such as iron," Clydesdale said. "Imagine building into the genetic structure plants the ability to produce the meat peptides responsible for enhancing iron bioavailability," he said. "We would be able to conquer worldwide anemia with grains containing such a factor."
Clydesdale will focus on food-science innovations of the next five decades during an address at IFT's 50th anniversary celebration in Chicago. The event is scheduled in conjuction with IFT's Annual Meeting and FOOD EXPO, to be held June 25-29 at McCormick Place.
Based in Chicago, IFT is the non-profit professional scientific society devoted to the discovery of new and application of existing knowledge to improving the world's food supply. It's 23,000 food scientists are active in academic, industrial and government organizations.
The Top 10
Aseptic processing and packaging
Minimum safe canning processes for vegetables
The microwave oven
Frozen concentrated citrus juices
Atmosphere controlled packaging for fresh fruits and vegetables
Freeze drying
Frozen meals
Concept of water activity
Food fortification
Ultra high temperature short term sterilization of milk (and other products)
* As nominated by the Fellows of IFT and judged by the IFT Expert Panel on Food Safety and Nutrition
Science Notes University
of Massachusetts at Amherst Science Contact: Art Clifford
Munson Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Telephone: (413) 545-0444
Drink Box Controversy
September 26,1990
Amerst, Mass. -- A half-page advertisement in today's Wall Street Journal shows thirsty GIs in the Saudi desert drinking from paper juice boxes. The ad goes on to praise the technology of the paper drink box, and how it makes milk and juice available without refrigeration.
The ad is actually part of a sophisticated lobbying effort to keep the paper drink box from being banned in some states, as it was in Maine on September 1, after a recycling controversy.
University of Massachusetts food scientist Fergus Clydesdale, however, thinks it's a mistake to ban the beverage box and he gave some testimony recently, to the Massachusetts Joint Legislative Committee on Energy, explaining why.
"I like its safety, and the fact that it makes nutritious beverages more easily available," said Clydesdale from his laboratory on the University's Amherst campus. "GIs are only one group that benefit from the fact that milk in those packages will store for five months without refrigeration."
Massachusetts is one of about a dozen states considering a ban on the paper drink boxes.
"The objection to the containers is due to recycling problems because they are made of hard to seperate layers of paper, plastic and foil," explained Clydesdale. "While I agree we should aim at full recyclability, it is possible to recycle them now to some extent, and they use less energy in their manufacturing process than glass or cans."
Clydesdale chaired a food industry panel that recently cited the "aseptic," or germ-free drink box as a significant technical achievement because they "provide foods which are superior in both nutritional value and quality."
Drink Boxes -
The technical advantage of the drink box is that it needs a high temperature for a short time in processing. This destroys microrganisms, but not nutrients.
Clydesdale believes that the drink box container's nutritional advantages should help it become a preferred packaging material for many foods. He adds, however, that more research should be done to assure full recyclability, and he advocates establishing a timetable to accomplish this.
"While recyclability is the goal to which we all must strive, it is important to note that the EPA regards source reduction as the number one solution to landfill problems," Clydesdale cautioned. "Asceptic packaging may be the best environmental solution when landfill source reduction is considered."
To illustrate the point, he compares a ten gram, 250 millileter aseptic package with a ten ounce bottle. The ten ounce bottle weighs, with closure and label, approximately 175 grams. Clydesdale says that even after the glass is recycled at 50 percent - which he says is optimistic - 88 grams of glass packaging material would be disposed of, while only 10 grams of aseptic packaging material would be.
"Another consideration is that almost ten times more empty packaging material can be placed on a truck, when suppliers ship aseptic packages instead of glass," he said. "The light weight of the paper drink boxes, and their rectangular shape means over 50% more boxes can be packed on a truck than with comparable glass containers.
"The citizens of Massachusetts shouldn't be deprived of the products of this process, nor should we place our farmers or rapidly growing food processing industry at a disadvantage to other states," he said.
An estimated $600 million worth of paper drink boxes will go in childrens lunch boxes this year, according to a recent issue of Business Week magazine. That's an increase of 12 percent over last year.
Editor's Note: Dr. Clydesdale may be reached at (413) 545-2275