Preservation methods to cut bacteria gossip
preservation methods, say Danish scientists at a meeting today.
They claim that understanding the language that bacteria use to communicate with each other could unlock new methods that prevent this communication, thereby reducing the risk of food spoilage.
Up to 25 per cent of all food including crops, meat and fish are lost before consumption because micro-organisms, such as bacteria, take a grip, springing into action immediately after harvest and start growing on food.
Reducing risk to both the pocket and consumer health, the food industry is obliged to widely use a host of preservatives to prevent the growth of micro-organisms.
Ingredients most in demand in the €19.8 billion (by 2007) food additives market include the benzoates (sodium benzoate), sorbates (sorbic acid and potassium sorbate), and the propionates (sodium or calcium propionate), which are organic acids or their salts.
Acidulants - acetic, adipic, citric, fumaric, lactic acids - are also used due to the acidity boost they give to food, creating a hostile environment for bacteria.
According to researchers led by Professor Lone Gram at the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, some foods become spoiled through a complex process which starts when the bacteria begin talking to each other.
They use communication signals to sense when there are enough of them, and then they can change the way they behave and the chemicals they secrete to attack the foodstuffs.
"Bacteria have a social life. Some fight each other - and others communicate," says Professor Gram today at the annual meeting of the Society for General Microbiology.
"Bacteria grow in most of our foods, and some foods rot because the bacteria have decided to change their behaviour," she adds.
In parallel to ongoing concerns to keep food safe, consumers are actually calling for natural foods or products without synthetic or chemical preservatives.
In the first half of 2005, food processors released a total of 564 products in Europe labelled as either without preservatives or additives or billed as "all natural", compared to 438 released over the same period last year, according to statistics compiled using Mintel's Global New Products Database.
But food spoilage can amount to severe costs for the food industry, and preservatives can lead to huge savings. In the US alone, retailers discard food worth $30bn to $40bn a year, with convenience stores alone junking 26 per cent of the food that enters their hands, only to be topped by consumers, who bin a further $43bn worth of food.
