
Prof. Cristina Silva LM was guest speaker in the congress 1st Food Chemistry Conference - Shaping the Future of Food Quality, Health and Safety which took place from October 31 to November 1, 2016 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her presentation was entitled Integrative predictive modeling for food safety and quality - Tools and applications.
The event celebrated the 40th anniversary of the international journal Food Chemistry and brought together experts and young researchers from academia, research centers and industry to discuss the latest scientific advances in the field of food chemistry and the respective challenges, current and future, in terms quality, health and safety of the food chain.
The lecture of Prof. Cristina L. M. Silva was based on the summary below. Those interested can get in touch via email clsilva@porto.ucp.pt.
«To produce food with the required quality and safety, the whole chain has to be taken into consideration. From post-harvest/slaughter to processing, storage and distribution, the understanding of how physical, chemical and/or microbial parameters affect foodstuffs is crucial in order to control and predict conditions assuring its quality. The outcome should be shelf-life extension, with reduced environmental impact and consequently better food security.
Food quality and safety needs a holistic approach, taking into consideration aspects such as: microstructure, composition and their relationship with molecular mobility, and consequently microbial behavior; kinetics of change of several parameters, like enzymatic activities, microbial counts, or different quality parameters; transport phenomena in processing, storage and distribution.
This work proposes the use of predictive modeling as an integrative tool, taking into consideration the holistic approach to food safety and quality. A summary of the main aspects that shall/can be taken into account will be presented, along the main state of knowledge. The main challenges for progressing on this field will be also listed. Finally, a few case studies will be presented together with the advantages of using integrative predictive modeling in terms of food safety, quality and security.»