History of extruded breakfast cereal

Extrusion is defined as a process in which material is pushed through an orifice or a die of given shape. The pushing force is applied using a piston or a screw. Extrusion-technology is gaining increasing popularity in the global agro-food processing industry, particularly in the food and feed sectors. Extrusion cooking technologies are used for cereal and protein processing in food.

Extruded breakfast cereal is one of ready-to-eat extruded products and ideal food for people’s modern-day lifestyle, where speed and convenience, as well as complete nutritional values, are desirable food characteristics.

Historically, one can trace the use of a screw as a conveying device to the Greek philosopher Archimedes, who used a single screw in a cylindrical open channel to pump water uphill.

The first food extruder was designed to manufacture sausages in 1870s. Breakfast cereal have been produced via extrusion since 1930s when it was used to process making ready-to-eat (RTE) cereals to shape hot, precooked dough.

In this application, the level of shear rate was low. Extrusion technology has replaced the conventional method of boiling and then drying the products and is a popular technique to make ready to eat products.

During the late 1930s and 1940s, directly expanded corn curls were made using extruders, which were characterized by extremely high shear rates. The first patent on an application of twin-screw extrusion technology was filed in the mid-1950s.

The extrusion cooking, especially used in the production of precooked and modified starches, ready to eat cereals, and snack foods has increased recently.

History of extruded breakfast cereal  

Invention of Van Houten chocolate processing

In 1815, Coenraad Johannes van Houten (1801-1887), a Dutch chemist, began work on his Amsterdam factory on a process that would revolutionize the manufacture of drinking chocolate while paving for eating chocolate.

In 1828 he patented a press that removed most of the bitter fat, which accounts for more than half the weight, from the ground, roasted beans. He pioneered a pressing process for milling cocoa he removed the center of the bean –called nib – in order to make the resulting paste more digestible.

Van Houten also went on to treat the coca with alkaline salts to improve it blending with hot water. This process is known as ‘Dutching’. The process made its cocoa essence more soluble and more ‘chocolatey’ in taste.

For the first time, cheap chocolate powder could be produces for the masses. Ten years after he had patented the process van Houten sold the rights to his cocoa press. One of his first customers was J.S Fry & Sons of Bristol, England.

Van Houten established a new steam-powered factory in 1850, close to Amsterdam.

Van Houten sold his cocoa to candy makers, housewife and bakers. In 1877, C.J van Houten and Zoon, of Weesp, Holland applied for a British trademark, which was registered for Van Houten’s Pure Soluble Cocoa until 1989.

The English firm of Cadbury reproduced the technology of van Houten and quickly became the leading British confectioner, due to its marketing strategy of connecting boxes of chocolate candies to romance: boxes of chocolates were demanded by men to be given to their special lady friends.
Invention of Van Houten chocolate processing

Peter Durand of food canning process

The use of canned food dates back to Napoleonic days when a French candy maker, Nicolas Appert, conducted food preservation experiments by canning soups and vegetables in champagne bottles.

In the year 1810 Peter Durand, an English merchant secured a patent from the English Government for the preservation of fruits, vegetables and fish in airtight, tin-plated, wrought iron cans. Durand also obtained a patent on metal containers. The latter gave rose to the term tin can.

He did not claim to be the discoverer of the process, but it was an ‘invention communicated to me by a certain foreigner’.

Peter Durand was himself from a Huguenot family with relations on both sides of the Channel who dealt in food and wine, and there could have been plenty of opportunity for Durand to communicate with Appert and other French client inventors.

In 1811, Durand sold the patent engineer Bryan Donkin for £1,000 and new owners soon were making the first ‘tin cans’ at the phenomenal rate of ten cans per man per day.

With the tin mines in England, tin plated steel was soon being produced in commercial quantities.
Peter Durant of food canning process

The history of heat treatment on food

In contrast to food irradiation processes, heat treatment has been used in the preparation of foods for millennia.

The original concept of in-container sterilization of foods has come a long way since Nicholas Appert first introduced ‘the art of canning’ in 1810.

He eventually received a prize of 12,000 French francs from the French government for inventing a method for safety preserving foods for long term storage.

Nicholas Appert showed that the application of thermal treatment to foods contained in tightly closed cans was able to preserve them from spoilage.

About 50 years later it was Pasteur who gave sense to this procedure by discovering that microbes were responsible for the deterioration of foods and heat acted killing them.

While at the same period, Nestlé started the production of condensed milk and powdered milk by concentrating milk through evaporation.

In 1819, William Underwood of the United States started the first canning factory in Baltimore.

To preserve foods in boiling water took too long, requiring about 6 hours, therefore salt was added to the water bath which increased the boiling temperature, thereby shortening the processing time.

This followed by the discovery of the pressure cooker and later the autoclave, which has gone through subsequent improvement to result in today’s still retorts.

In 1945, researchers studied the effect of heating the germ, at various moisture levels for different periods in a hot air oven, on the enzyme activities and its stability during storage at 37 degree C in laminated metal foil.

FMC Corporation introduced the continuous agitating cookers in the 1950s, and at about the same time, Steriflamme process was developed in France.

Steriflamme is a flame sterilization process in which rapidly rotating cans pass through live flames at temperatures of about 2000 ° F.
The history of heat treatment on food

Flour milling in United States

One of the early mill, gristmills, such as the one at Jamestown in 1621, ground corn and wheat for meal and flour help to feed the colonist while making the millers key local figures.

The vast majority of mills up to about 1800, operated as custom mills that ground the farmer’s grain for a toll in flour paid to the miller.

In the late eighteenth century Oliver Evans invented labor-saving machinery which greatly increased the productivity of flour mills.

Eastern mills that had relied on soft wheat felt competition from larger western millers based in Minneapolis and other Midwestern cities that used new machinery to grind the hard wheat that predominated in the Midwest.

As the population moved westward and grain production increased, four milling became an important industry.

As early as 1850, flour milling accounted for almost 10 percent of all industrial establishments an over 13 percent of the value of all industrial products. The milling industry became increasingly centralized.

In themed 1800s there were an estimated 25,000 mills in America; by 1900 there were only 13,000 mills, by 2000 there were a mere 1oo flour milling companies.

With an expanding rail system, flour milling could be concentrated and product shipped to markets throughout the country. By the end of the nineteenth century, American and Canadian flour exports to Britain had grown steadily.

Baltimore was the early leader in flour milling, developing a flour trade with the South, Latin America, and Europe, while Rochester and Buffalo growing in stature after completion of the Erie Canal.

The most important western milling town was St. Luis. This city with its fine river and rail transportation facilities captured markets for flour in the South and the East.
Flour milling in United States

History of vegetable oil hydrogenation process

Large scale chemical usage derives from the beginning of the 20th century with hydrogenation processing of mineral oils and of vegetable and animal oils.

Hydrogenation process is an important oil modification method for altering the physical and chemical properties of the oils. The complete hydrogenation converts the unsaturated fatty acids to saturated ones. The process is widely applied to the processing of vegetable oil fats.

The invention of hydrogenation is generally attributed to Sabatier at the end of the 19th century.

French chemist Paul Sabatier is considered the father of the hydrogenation process. In Sabatier’s hydrogenation process, it brought about large variety of reactions, especially the reduction of double bonds between carbon atoms to single bonds in organic substances. In 1902, a German awarded patent for Sabatier’s invention.

Liquid-phase hydrogenation was reported in a patent issued to William Normann in 1903. Wilhelm Normann was awarded a patent in Germany in 1902 and in Britain in 1903 for the hydrogenation of liquid oils. In Normann’s hydrogenation, the process converted vegetable oils, such as cotton seed oil, and also animal oils such as whale oil and fish into hard, white fats so that they could be used as lard substitute for making margarine.

In 1909 a small quantity of hydrogenated fat was delivered, admittedly of cottonseed oil, to two German margarine manufacturing plants, the first attempt to use hydrogenated fat in the foodstuffs industry.

With the introduction of the hydrogenation process in 1909, hydrogenated vegetable oil quickly replaced ‘compound’ as the preferred type of blended shortening.

In United States The Procter & Gamble Company started their commercial production of hydrogenated cottonseed oil in 1911.
History of vegetable oil hydrogenation process

Food preservation: Canning

Food preservation: Canning
In the early nineteenth century, when France and Britain were at war with each other more soldiers and sailors died from disease than from battle.

Both the French and Britain government realized something important. Finding a new way to preserve food (keep it from spoilage) would prevent soldiers and sailors from dying. A larger, healthier fighting force would bring a greater advantage in battle. In 1795, the French government took action. It offered a prize of 12,000 francs. The money would go to the inventor of the best preserved food. The food had to be healthy, easily carried and not too expensive.

In 1803 a French chef named Nicolas Appert invented a new technique for preserving food. He prepared and preserved soup, beef with gravy, beans and peas. The French navy stored it for three months. Then they tried it. The food was delicious and safe to eat.

For the next few years, Appert provided the French fleet with preserved foods such as stew, milk and juice. This preservation technique proved successful. In 1810 the French government gave Appert the prize.

In this process, Appert filled the glass bottles with food and closed the bottles with cork stoppers. He then tight down the stoppers with the wire and sealed them with a thick, waxy coating called pitch. As a final step, Appert boiled the sealed bottles in water. Food heated in the airtight bottles did not spoil.

In 1821 an Englishman named William Underwood brought Appert’s invention to the United States. Underwood set up a factory in Boston, Massachusetts, to bottle lobster and salmon. Later the factory switched from glass bottles to metal canister. The word “can” was first used in Boston for these metal containers. Appert’s preservation method became known as “canning’ whether bottles or cans were used.
Food preservation: Canning

High Temperature Short Time Process

High Temperature Short Time Process
There are systems for processing canned foods at high temperature for short times. These are referred to as HTST or High Temperature Short Time processes. In such system, commercial sterilization is achieved at temperatures of 280 – 300 F. Large discrete particles cannot be processed by High Temperature Short Time methods because they require some time for heat to penetrate their centers. HTST methods are applied only to liquids, and to foods that have been pureed (mashed bananas, concentrated pea soup, etc).

There are five main ways to preserve foods and remove microorganisms:
Chemicals
Drying
Refrigeration
Canning
Radiation

The History of HTST
The process of pasteurization was named after Louis Pasteur who discovered that spoilage organisms could be inactivated in wine by applying heart at temperatures below its boiling point. The process was later applied to milk and remains the most important operation in the processing of milk.

There are various methods of pasteurization. In early 1900’s a batch method as used where a tank of milk was held at 145 degrees for 30 minutes. Pasteurization did not sterilize the milk and it still needed to be refrigerated afterwards. It did greatly reduce the number of bacteria in the milk so the chance of bacterial illness was minimized and the shelf life of the milk was increased. High Temperature Short Time continuous processes were developed between 1920 and 1927 and for some time the ability of the HTST process to produce safe milk was questioned.

There is also a UHT (ultra High temperature) method where the milk is heated well above boiling under pressure for just a few second. This product is essentially sterile and does not have to be refrigerated until it is opened. For most continuous processing, a high temperature short time pasteurizer is used. The heat treatment is accomplished using a plate heat exchanger. High Temperature Short Time Process

History of Milk

History of Milk
The Holstein breed outnumbers all others used in the United States for the production of milk. Jersey and Guernsey breeds tolerate hot weather better than Holsteins, hence may be the predominant types used for the production of milk in hot weather areas. Some Ayrshire, and Brown Swiss or Shorthorn breeds are used in certain areas. Cow’s milk contains an average of 3.8 % fat, 3.3% protein, 4.8% lactose, 0.7% ash, and 87.4% water, Milk also contains vitamins and other nutrients in small amounts, making it the most complete of foods. The young of mammalians survive on it exclusively.

Cow milk was first used as human food in the Middle East. Goats and sheep were domesticated in the Middle East between 9000 and 8000 BC. Goats and sheep are ruminants: mammals adapted to survive on a diet of dry grass, a food source other useless to humans, and one that is easily stockpiled. Around 7000Bc, cattle were being herded in parts of Turkey.

Fermented products such as cheeses were discovered by accident, but their history has also been documented for many centuries, as has the production of concentrated milks, butter, and even ice cream. The use of cheese and butter spread in Europe, parts of Asia and parts of Africa. Domestic cows were introduced to the colonies o f Europe during the Age of Exploration.

Cattle were first brought to United States in the 1600s by the earliest colonies. By 1790, population centers such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had grown sufficiently to become an attractive market for larger scale dairy operations. To meet the increase demand, farmers began importing breeds if cattle that were better suited for milk production. At that time variety of machines for processing of milk was also developed.

In 1856, Gail Borden patented a method for making condensed milk by heating it in a partial vacuum. In 1863, Louis Pasteur developed a method of heating to kill the microorganisms that cause wine to turn into vinegar. Later this method was adapted to milk processing and known as pasteurization process. Milk was first delivered in bottles on Jan 11, 1878 and known as a Milk day.
History of Milk