| At HPBB last year (coincidentally in Japan where high pressure food sterilization was first commercialized) there was a whole series on high pressure sterilization of food. The last presentation was a company with a scalable automated canning and sterilizing machine that was simply beautiful from an engineering standpoint. Since we don't fully understand nutrients and how stuff like high pressure sterilization, heating, and other methods affect bioavailability, impact protein structure, and create other changes, it's all down to trying and learning as we go. What's great about pressure is that it can deactivate and destroy some of the harmful organisms in food, but my curious concern is what does that do to the cellular material we want intact for our body, how does that affect the protein structure (for those not familiar, protein structure and folding is absolutely crucial for functionality). Irradiation concerns me more than pressure because if you're not careful, you could be breaking bonds that you don't want to be breaking. All in all it's a fascinating topic and important to everyone who eats. |