Electrolyzed Water: Novel Fruit And Vegetable Sanitizer

Food safety is very important issue for both consumers and food industry.

- Manjunath J Shetty and Dr. Vasudeva K R

Introduction

Ensuring the food safety should be the first priority of both industry and scientists. Food-borne illnesses are still a major threat, even in the first world countries. Worldwide, there are 1.5 billion cases of food-borne illness each year and more than 3 million deaths are recorded per year; in addition, food-borne diseases may be 300–350 times more frequent than the numbers of reported cases tend to indicate (WHO, 1997). Food spoilage bacteria are also an important issue especially for industry. Microbial food spoilage is an area of global concern as it has been estimated that as much as 30 % of all food produced is lost post-harvest owing to microbial activity.

Spoilage reactions can be inhibited by traditional processing and preservation procedures, but there is increasing interest in products with milder and more natural mechanisms of preservation. Consumers are on concern of removing artificial preservatives from their food, which may potentially have undesirable effects on human health and they prefer to use natural preservation. Therefore, there is a need for new techniques for reducing or eliminating food spoilage and foodborne illness. Electrolyzed NaCl solutions have attracted much recent attention as a high-performance, new technology for potential use as disincentive agent (no chemical use except 0.1 % NaCl solution) in the food industry.

Electrolyzed water (EW)