Market analyst BCC's "RGA-116: Adding Life to Foods: Trends, Techniques and opportunities in Food Preservation and Shelf Life Extension" demonstrates that with the proliferation of new technologies and techniques to ensure that food is kept nutritionally sound, food manufacturers have a great opportunity to improve their products.
Food additives, of which preservatives form a key and important component to foods and beverages, are a $4 billion-a-year market in the US alone. The report contains a comprehensive analysis of such diverse preservatives as BHA/BHT, antioxidants and antimicrobials. Canning, packaging, encapsulation, chilling and thermal processing, irradiation and other forms of food preservation also feature.
BCC analysts Paula Kalamaras and Paul Kraly also study the trends that are developing in the areas of shelf-life extension and analyse the direction of the industry over the next several years.
Essentially, the purpose of food preservation is to retard spoilage. Food preservation shares the same goals as food processing: to achieve a constant supply of food throughout the seasons catering for all populations and supplying a constant variety of foods for eating and convenience.
It is also a way to preserve freshness, texture, taste and nutrient value. Food preservation and consequently shelf-life extension are intimately connected to food safety issues. Without the advantages of preservation, foods would spoil quickly, become insect infested and be unfit for human consumption.
BCC believes that the report is timely. Americans alone produce 97 billion pounds of food waste each year, in many instances because the food is not fresh or safe to eat anymore. In today's health-conscious society where people strive to look for the right foods, says the firm, it has become just as important to make sure the right foods stay "right" for as long as possible.
As such food preservation, be it through the use of chemicals, packaging, encapsulation or irradiation, is necessary to ensure that the foods that reach consumers is safe, healthy and edible. Consumers, who in the US are responsible for $265 billion in food purchases each year, are requiring that food processors develop foods that have low incidences of synthetic chemical preservatives, and higher antioxidant and antimicrobial counts.
As a result, the $500-billion-a year-food industry, with over 17,000 food and beverage processing companies, relies more than ever on the various forms of shelf-life extension technology needed to ensure their products will be packed, shipped, delivered and consumed with as little spoilage as possible. Because of this, the food preservation industry is on the verge of radically changing the ways in which the foods consumers purchases are extended.
From such radical forms of preservation as irradiating or encapsulating foods to incorporating antimicrobial agents into the packaging itself, food processors are seeking ways to reduce the number of chemicals incorporated into the foods themselves.