Empower the high-quality development of the food industry with science and technology

Reporter Wang Wei

In the post-epidemic era, the attention of convenience food has increased from 1.
2 times to 3.
3 times in the overall food industry, how to better ensure the safety of convenience food and improve the nutritional value of products with scientific and technological means? How can risk communication be done more effectively and grounded? Recently, at the special exchange meeting of "Convenience Food Supply Chain Safety and Risk Exchange" held during the 22nd China Convenience Food Conference, a number of authoritative experts and industry representatives in the convenience food industry conducted in-depth exchanges and discussions
on the above topics.
Wang Zhutian, Chairman of the Food Safety and Standard Technology Branch of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology and researcher of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, co-chaired the meeting
with Liu Jingsheng, Chairman of the Flour Products Branch of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology and Vice President of Jilin Agricultural University.

Strengthen scientific and technological support to inject more "health factors" into convenience foods

Wang Shuo, Deputy Dean of the Institute of Public Health and Health of Nankai University, introduced the research progress
of convenience food nutrition innovation.
Wang Shuo said that in recent years, more and more high-tech has been applied to the convenience food industry to ensure the safety of convenience food and enhance the nutritional value
of products with scientific and technological means.
For example, the application of smart packaging can effectively extend the shelf life of food, improve food safety, and effectively maintain the flavor, taste and nutritional value of food; Replace traditional thermal processing with new thermal processing technology, while improving efficiency, can reduce the damage of thermal processing to food quality, the application of membrane separation and ultrafine crushing technology, break the limitations of traditional convenience food raw material processing, so that raw materials can be maximized
.

Wang Shuo said that first of all, it is the research
on high dietary fiber and high-protein instant noodles.
At present, the average intake of protein by Chinese residents is only 80% of the recommended intake, and the average intake of dietary fiber only reaches 40%-58%
of the recommended intake amount.
Studies have shown that by adding folic acid, rice bran extract, pea protein isolate and green tea extract, etc.
, the nutritional and functional properties of flour products can be significantly improved, among which dietary fiber can delay the digestion of starch and the absorption of glucose, thereby reducing postprandial blood sugar and exerting health effects
.
Therefore, it is proved that nutritional fortification and formula optimization are effective measures
to improve the nutritional and functional characteristics of convenience foods.
Studies have shown that the appropriate addition of pea protein, black bean flour, wheat bran, etc.
can improve the nutritional value of instant noodle products, and has no significant effect
on the rehydration and texture characteristics of instant noodles.
In addition, studies on chronic digestion of low-GI instant noodles have shown that instant noodles with a low glycemic index can be developed by adding different dietary fibers to meet the nutritional needs
of special populations for convenience foods.
For example, resistant starch can improve glycolipid metabolism, regulate intestinal microecology, and can be added to instant noodles as high-quality dietary fiber to improve its nutritional characteristics
.
Wang Shuo appealed that in the future, the majority of scientific and technological workers in China will need to work together to develop and develop a wide variety of convenient foods
with diverse flavors and rich nutrients.

Professor Zhang Yuyu of the School of Light Industry Science and Technology of Beijing Technology and Business University introduced the latest progress and innovative application of
convenience food salt reduction technology.
Zhang Yuyu believes that China's convenience food market has great potential, and it is an inevitable trend
in the development of convenience food to empower convenience food "flavor and health" with science and technology, and realize healthy transformation.
How to balance the deliciousness and health of food has become the key to
the healthy transformation of the food industry, including convenience food.
Relying on scientific and technological progress, flavor compensation makes it possible
to "reduce salt without reducing taste".
She introduced that at present, there are six main methods of salt reduction: non-sodium salt instead of salt reduction, optimization of salt crystal structure and food texture salt reduction, natural extract salt reduction, processing method salt reduction, salty peptide salt reduction, multi-sensory synergy to enhance salty perception salt reduction, the use of taste and smell, and even vision to enhance the overall salty perception
of food.
Among them, natural extracts, umami peptides, salty peptide salt reduction technology, applied in seasoned salt, mushroom salt, ham sausage and other products, can compensate for food flavor and improve the perceived strength
of savory taste through yeast extract rich in umami ingredients.
"At present, China has greatly improved the production technology, process level and output of flavor enhancers, strengthening application technology, developing more salt reduction products, and enhancing international competitiveness are particularly important
for the development of China's convenience food industry.
" Zhang Yuyu said
.
She said that in the next step, there is still a lot of work to be done in the development of salt reduction technology, mainly including the analysis of key salt reduction flavor substances, the improvement of flavor enhancer standards, and the theoretical support and technical development of multi-sensory synergistic flavor and salt reduction
.

Consolidate the foundation of equipment and ingredients to "add fire" to the development of the industry

"Equipment innovation is the sustainable driving force
for the development of the convenience food industry.
" Wei Yimin, a professor at the Institute of Agricultural Products Processing of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that this can be seen
from the review of innovative products of machinery and equipment in the convenience food industry that the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology continued to promote during the China Convenience Food Conference.
These innovative devices have fueled the convenience food industry
.
What impressed him was the quantitative cooked noodle machine and the hot and dry noodle all-in-one machine
.
From the current market application situation, cooked fresh noodle machine has been applied in some chain catering industries, so that the processing kitchen of the chain catering industry has an additional type of products
in noodle processing.
Another example is the automatic non-fried steamed noodle production line, with the improvement of production technology level and equipment capacity, the quality of non-fried steamed noodles has also been improved, especially the parallel phenomenon that is easy to occur in the production process of steamed noodles has also been improved
through process transformation.
The first process of noodle processing is noodles, and the noodles in the past used ordinary pressing and dough machines or vacuum dough machines, but can not achieve continuous dough, the launch of the ball continuous vacuum and dough machine, to achieve continuity, reduce production energy consumption
.
Wei Yimin said that these innovative equipment meet people's pursuit of a better life and help the high-quality development of
the convenience food industry.
In the future, the intelligent manufacturing technology, equipment and process control level of convenient food machinery need to be further improved by deepening the integration of science and technology and industry
.

Sauerkraut is a more widely used ingredient in convenience food, and its safety guarantee is very important
.
Chen Gong, President of Sichuan Food Fermentation Industry Research and Design Institute, introduced the production quality, safety control and technological innovation
of Laotan sauerkraut.
Chen Gong introduced that Laotan sauerkraut is a kind of pickles and pickles, and is a widely used ingredient
in convenience foods.
Mastering the law of fermentation is the core of
breaking through the controllable production of traditional kimchi.
In order to understand the rules of kimchi fermentation process and the excellent strains in it, the team collected kimchi samples from all over the country for many times, conducted in-depth research on its process, physicochemistry and flora, preliminarily explored the structure and distribution of kimchi microorganisms in China, and created a culture resource bank, determined the dominant flora in kimchi sauerkraut, and screened, identified and preserved more than 10,000 kinds of kimchi microorganisms
.
The team boldly innovated and made the isolated excellent microorganisms into functional agents
through bioengineering technology.
The direct-injection fungicide for kimchi has the characteristics of "double high", that is, high activity and high stability
.
The use of direct-injected lactic acid bacteria to regulate fermentation shortens the ripening period of kimchi, reduces the amount of salt, realizes artificial controllability, and solves the technical bottleneck
of traditional fermentation in industrial production.
In addition to process innovations, the team also developed continuous fermentation systems
.
"More than 20 batches of continuous fermentation, the output of a single batch reaches more than 5 tons, the fermentation time is shortened from the original 720 hours to 72 hours, and the nitrite content of the product is low, which really realizes the clean and standardized processing
of traditional kimchi.
" Chen Gong said
.

The supply of raw materials is also the focus
of convenience food companies.
Qi Chi, an analyst from the Grain and Oil Monitoring Department of the National Grain and Oil Information Center, introduced the supply and demand situation and price trend
of wheat at home and abroad.
Qi Well-known analysis pointed out that from the perspective of global supply, wheat production has increased, and trade volume has also increased
.
International wheat prices are high and volatile, but uncertainty in global wheat trade has limited impact on domestic markets, as domestic wheat supplies are self-sufficient and market demand is surplus
.

Strengthen risk communication and do a good job of popularizing science with the help of new communication methods

Popular science and technology are the "two wings"
of industrial development.
Grounded and scientific science popularization is conducive to the exchange
of food safety risks.
Professor Shen Qun of the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University shared his views
on consumer education and science popularization of convenience foods.
Shen Qun introduced that the healthy development of convenience food is inseparable from popular science, consumer education is a systematic project, with a complete knowledge system, of which cooking education is the basis of
consumer education.
"If you don't understand the cooking process, you can't appreciate the whole process of food manufacturing, which increases the difficulty
of popularizing science.
" Shen Qun said that the food manufacturing industry is to mechanize and automate
every step of kitchen cooking.
First of all, we must understand the whole process of cooking in order to be able to do a good job of consumer education
.
Shen Qun cited a short video about the production process of instant noodles in the report to introduce how enterprises should make efforts
in science popularization.
She said that in fact, what the video shows is quite different from the current instant noodle production equipment and production environment
.
However, there are very few videos that allow consumers to intuitively understand the real production process of the enterprise, resulting in a lack of first-hand video materials
for teachers in the process of popular science education and training students.
She hopes that companies can shoot more videos showing the production process for consumer science education
.
How to express popular science so that consumers can understand? In Shen Qun's view, the knowledge obtained by consumers is fragmented, which will bring cognitive differences, and to eliminate this difference, it is necessary to establish a systematic knowledge system and take time to learn
systematically.
At the same time, popular science people must also learn to use new communication methods to do popular
science.

Chen Lishui, President of the Research Institute of Weilong Yummy Global Holdings Co.
, Ltd.
, shared the rapidly emerging seasoned noodle products
in convenience foods.
He said that seasoned noodle products, as an emerging industry, have gradually entered a benign development process
in recent years.
Seasoned noodle products "play" fashion, products from the past single taste to healthy fashion direction, and constantly launch a variety of fashionable products to cater to the taste
of the new generation of social groups.
At the same time, the industry has also begun to "shuffle", relevant data show that the number of seasoned noodle products enterprises in Henan Province has decreased from thousands in 2005 to hundreds in 2020
.
In this process, enterprises continue to strengthen their own capacity building, gradually from "small, scattered, chaotic" to "high, large, fine", products from "rustic low-end" to "fashion high-end"
.
Chen Lishui said that around the improvement of quality, the seasoned noodle products industry will have a lot of room
for improvement.
In the next step, we will strengthen investment in scientific research, support more new technologies, and continue to move towards the road
of nutrition and healthy development.

Zhu Kun, director of the fast food category of JD Chong, analyzed the consumption trend
of convenience food from the perspective of the market.
He said that the expansion of diversified scenarios has directly driven the growth
of the entire convenience food category.
The margin of convenience food is gradually expanding, from less categories and fewer brands to more categories and more brands
.
It can be seen that there are more and more segmented needs
from the crowd scene, demand scene and food scene.
Jingdong's sales data shows that among traditional convenience foods, noodles, dumplings, wontons, and instant noodles occupy the forefront of the market, but the emerging hot pot balls and instant rice categories have prominent market potential
.
In addition, the overall sales growth of high-end fast food has been rapid, driving the overall growth
of convenience food.
Products in the high-priced segment have become an important track to drive the overall growth of convenience food, and the trend of high-end convenience food is obvious
.
In addition, local snacks have opened up a new track for online convenience food, and online platforms have provided opportunities for local snacks to "break the circle
".

China Food News (December 16, 2022, version 05).

(Responsible editor: Wang Jiayi)