Pasteurization: What It Means and How It Changes Food

• In 1864, Louis Pasteur developed the technique to heat wine before aging it to kill microbes and reduce its acidity. Hence, the name pasteurization.
• However, the process itself has been around way before Louis Pasteur. It was popularly used in China to preserve wine in 1117AD.
• The main reason why it is named in his honor is due to his research that pointed towards microorganisms as the culprit for spoilage and disease that led to the Germ Theory of Disease.

• As it reduces the risk of food poisoning and extends shelf life, it, however, affects the texture, flavor, and nutritional value of certain food;
• It affects several vitamins such as vitamin A concentration increases, while the concentration of vitamin B2 decreases;
• It may cause softening of tissues on vegetables, nutrient changes - some increasing and some diminishing;
• It loses some aroma compounds for fruit juices and reduces vitamin C and carotene.

Milk offers a place where numerous pathogens grow and increase in numbers, including those that may cause tuberculosis, scarlet fever, E. coli, and more.

Before pasteurization, raw milk has been many milk-related diseases and deaths; only after the pasteurization process was introduced, milk-related diseases dropped drastically.

It now is able to disinfect food and inactivate soilage enzymes without significantly diminishing nutrient levels, this includes both thermal and non-thermal processes.