Do you want to know what is the origin and
history of Food Science & food technology?
Then stay right there cos In this lecture
I’m going to talk about the History of Food
Science & Technology, for beginners.
(Intro)
Hello everyone!
I’m Areeb Irshad and welcome to my channel
FoodTech Simplified, where I post easy and
simple to understand lectures on Food Science
& Food Technology, every week.
Before starting, let me just tell you that
in this lecture, I have covered some of the
major events and turning points that has shaped
the food industry that we see today.
And I have left out some minor events, inventions
and researches just for the sake of keeping
this video short, sweet and simple for a beginner.
So, let’s jump right into today’s topic
– ‘History of Food Science & Technology
for beginners’.
Do you know that most of the food we see on
the shelf of the supermarkets today, wasn’t
available a 100-150 years from now?
This was because there were very few techniques
to preserve the food.
The food would spoil very fast and a lot of
people suffered from food poisoning and even
death.
The food we eat today, is completely taken
for granted because it is cheap and easily
available.
The food you and I are eating today has been
possible because of the efforts of a lot of
scientists, researchers, engineers, food technologists,
nutritionists so that the food you are eating
is safe and healthy.
But the process of developing food wasn’t
invented overnight.
So, what is the history and how food technology
originated?
Well if you ask me, I think the preservation
of food has been abundant since early human
started farming.
Early humans realized the fact that they could
not always hunt for animals or pluck fruits
from trees every day.
And if they stored the food like meat, it
spoiled very fast.
So, they had to develop some preservation
techniques for eating the food even when they
could not hunt, or the fruits and vegetables
weren’t available.
Some of the earliest preservation techniques
include Sun-Drying, freezing, salting, fermentation
and so on.
The downside of the early preservation techniques
was that they changed the flavour and texture
of the food along with huge loss of vitamins
most of the time.
These techniques were not very effective for
travellers and soldiers who needed a healthy
diet.
During the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815), the
French Government offered 12,000 Francs to
anyone who could develop a method for preserving
food for the military.
In 1809, a French confectioner and chef developed
a method of sealing the food in glass jars.
The name of that French man was ‘Nicholas
Appert’.
The process was simple.
He sealed the food in a glass jar and then
heated the jar for some time depending upon
the food.
The method proved to be successful and he
was awarded 12,000 Francs.
The invention of canning is considered as
the major turning point in the history of
food technology and food science.
Because of his remarkable contribution, Nicholas
Appert is also known as the ‘Father of Canning’.
And even canning is sometimes referred to
as ‘Appertization’.
Although canning was successful but the science
behind its success wasn’t known until 50
years later, when a French microbiologist
and chemist showed that growth of micro-organisms
is responsible for the spoilage of beverages.
He also invented a process where milk was
heated to a specific temperature for a specified
time to kill the spoilage micro-organisms.
That French microbiologist was none other
than Louis Pasteur.
The process he invented is still prevalent
in the dairy industry and wine industry as
well.
And in the honour of Louis Pasteur, the process
is known as ‘Pasteurization’.
In 1895, almost a 30 years later in Boston,
Massachusetts, William Lyman Underwood of
a canning company worked with Samuel Prescott
to develop the research which would further
lead to the concept of ‘Thermal Death Time’.
A lot of people don’t consider this event
when it comes to the history of food technology,
but this was also one of the turning points
in the history as their research was important
to determine the time-temperature combination
for a food.
That means, for how long a food will be cooked
at what temperature.
Since then, a lot of research and discoveries
had been done but in the 20th century, food
safety was still an issue.
In 1960, the Pillsbury company, NASA and the
USA army labs collaborated to develop safe
and healthy food for the astronauts.
Eventually, they developed a systematic preventive
approach to ensure food safety and that came
to be known as ‘HACCP’.
I’ll do a separate video on HACCP because
this is another important and big topic but
all you need to know for now is that HACCP
is a preventive tool used in food industry
to ensure safety of the food.
HACCP is prevalent today in every food industry
and food safety is incomplete without the
implementation of the HACCP program.
Since the development of HACCP, there have
been a lot of rapid growth in the food technology.
Industrialists have adopted newer technologies
to process the food in a faster and efficient
way.
So, these were some of the major breakthroughs
in the history of food technology.
Let me know down in the comments if I have
missed any important event/research.
Like this video if you found this useful.
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on food science & food technology.
Thank you.
Class dismissed.
