Accelerated shelf-life testing of snack foods

This MITACS supported collaborative project with Lassonde Inc., was to develop a tool for shelf-life prediction of packaged snack foods by obtaining data under accelerated testing conditions. The gathering of data involves holding the pre-packaged snack bars (provided by the company) at different elevated temperatures for selected times. The product quality during storage is periodically evaluated in order to pick-up appropriate indicator(s) which can potentially be modeled based on some established kinetic theory to be able to predict shelf-life at lower (room) temperature conditions. Quality parameters planned to be studied include: appearance (colorimeter), hardness & chewiness (texture meter), water activity, TSS, pH, acidity, volatile profile, and others like peroxide value as found appropriate. Sensory testing will also be done with support from the company staff. Selected kinetic models will be tested with the data for suitability. Since storage stability of dehydrated products depend deeply on moisture sorption isotherms (MSI), the MSI of the snack foods will also be evaluated. It is hoped that the study will yield meaningful parameters for shelf-life predictions.

Faculty Supervisor:

Hosahalli Ramaswamy

Student:

Partner:

Lassonde Inc.;A. Lassonde

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

McGill University

Program: