MOLECULAR APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF FOOD QUALITY

Research in the realm of food quality involves many scientific disciplines from cellular to organ-system physiology, from neural impulse transduction to psychomotor and psychological response, from isolated molecules to their combined biochemical interactions, from mathematics to complex statistical correlations, from negatively impacting microbiological issues to positively impacting microbial safety issues, from simple methods of creating food to complex ones, and from human means of assessing food flavor quality to instrumental methods performing the same objective. For continued growth of our global economy, food scientists need to know the answers to questions such as: What is food flavor and food quality? How are they measured? What mechanisms, such as processing, endogenous factors, outside (external) factors, contribute to the production and loss of food quality? What are some food safety, nutritional and health concerns? What are some of the management and production strategies to enhance food quality? This chapter was written to present the most recent information in response to these questions.