Food Processing: Canning Improvements - Essay Example

The paper "Food Processing: Canning Improvements" is a great example of an essay on family and consumer science. Food processing can most fundamentally be defined as “a variety of operations by which raw foodstuffs are made suitable for consumption, cooking, or storage” (Eufic, 2010). Owing to the multifarious benefits of food processing, a variety of techniques of food processing and preservation have been developed. One such technology is the canning of foods. The technology used to can foods for preservation was introduced by Nicolas Appert at the start of the 19th century (fao.org, n.d.). The suitability and consumption of canned food have increased over the centuries as life has become busier. People find it convenient to consume canned foods than cooking food at home for a variety of reasons. The increasing demand for canned food imparts the need to improve its quality as well as cost-effectiveness so that its consumption can be beneficial for the producers as well as the consumers. According to Crown, processing of edible products can be improved within the metal cans “by using beverage-style cans that are better at resisting increases in internal pressure and using induction heating to heat a small amount of water within the can to process the particulate inside it” (Whitworth, 2013). The reason beverage-style cans are better than the traditional cans is that unlike the latter, the metal used in the making of the former is thinner which not only reduces the cost of production but also cuts down the transportation cost with the reduced weight of the cans. This paper will explore this and such other techniques for improving food processing and canning.