How to dry food correctly to keep the highest nutrition? Analysis of drying method!

Before the large-scale agricultural revolution and the rise of transnational trade, the agricultural products

How to dry food correctly to keep the highest nutrition? Analysis of drying method!

Before the large-scale agricultural revolution and the rise of transnational trade, the agricultural products harvested in summer and autumn often brought another kind of trouble to people: how to preserve fresh vegetables and fruits and enjoy them in cold winter?

It is a food preservation method that human beings have used for a long time to reduce the moisture in food and prevent spoilage caused by microorganisms or enzymes. Nowadays, drying technology is not only used to preserve food, but also to reduce the size and weight of food to facilitate packaging and transportation, and thus many convenient foods, such as coffee powder and instant noodles, have been developed. It is convenient to carry and can be eaten by brewing hot water.

There are many ways of drying, which can be divided into natural drying and artificial drying.

Natural drying method: the natural drying method using sunlight and wind in the environment uses sunlight and wind in the environment to dry food, mainly including sun exposure, air drying and shade drying. Common persimmons, dried radishes, mushrooms, dried bamboo shoots and raisins are all sun-dried; Traditional hsinchu rice noodles are air-dried.

Because of the use of environmental energy, its advantages are no energy consumption, the most economical, simple operation, and no need for any technology or equipment. But the main disadvantage is that "the weather is unpredictable", which depends on the environment and climate, and it is convenient when there is sun or strong wind. Because the natural environment is not easy to control, the drying speed and sanitary conditions are difficult to grasp, and the site demand is large, which requires manual auxiliary finishing, so it is not conducive to mass production.

Artificial drying method: providing artificial heat source, air heating and natural drying, depending on the conditions of natural environment. Of course, artificial drying is to provide a suitable drying environment for foods processed by various processes. Generally, there are different pressure environments, such as conduction, convection, radiation, or electromagnetic wave heating to dry food. There are many kinds of technologies here, which are limited by space. This paper mainly introduces the drying technology with air as the medium under normal pressure, and other technologies such as pressure drying, decompression drying and electromagnetic wave drying are not introduced for the time being.

The oldest artificial drying method is called kiln drying. Simply put, it is to set up a closed space, which is divided into upper and lower floors. The upper layer is the food to be dried, and the heat source of the fire is placed below, and the food is slowly baked by hot air until it is completely dry. This drying method is common in dried fruits and other foods. Now, a small household appliance "food dryer" based on the same principle has also come out, so that you can make dried fruits or jerky at home.

Emerging drying technologies: spray drying and refractive window drying. The drying method mentioned above mainly deals with large-sized finished products, such as dried vegetables and fruits, as small as diced meat and sugar. What should I do if I want to treat products such as relatively liquid or paste? The following are two drying techniques commonly used in liquid food.

Spray drying The characteristic of spray drying is that the sprayer plays an important role. The sprayer in the machine will spray liquid or paste raw materials into small droplets, which will be dried into fine powder in a few seconds under the action of hot air. Spray drier is mainly divided into air heating and circulation system, spraying device, drying bin and product recovery device.

Because of the large droplet surface area and fast drying speed, the temperature of food itself will not rise to a very high level, which is very helpful to preserve the original nutrition of food and is often used in the production of food, beverage, health food and medicine. Common products made by this method include milk powder, coffee powder, soybean milk powder, protein powder and so on. You can drink as long as you add water.

Refractive window drying Another brand-new food drying method is refractive window drying, that is, the dried material is placed on the "refractive window" of transparent polyester film, and hot water with the temperature of 95-97℃ is used as the heat source under the refractive window, and at the same time, the excess water is removed by ventilation. Finally, the membrane and the material are separated and dried!

? Although there are many steps in Anyi Nutrilite, in fact, because there are three ways of heat conduction, convection and radiation, the drying speed is quite fast. Using hot water as heat source, the product temperature will not rise too high, which is suitable for products that are sensitive to temperature and need to preserve more nutrients. Some studies have pointed out that the natural pigment molecules that are easily lost in plant fruits and vegetables can be preserved by "refraction window drying method", and more nutritional values in plant fruits and vegetables can also be preserved. This drying technology is not only used in food industry, but also in health food, pharmacy, cosmetics and so on.

There are many drying methods in food science, and different drying methods also have different applicable objects and cost considerations. How to choose an appropriate drying method and apply it to processed products also involves many professions. With the development of food science, it is more and more inevitable that natural food will lose many nutrients after processing.

Please join us in looking forward to the emerging extraction and drying technology, which can bring healthier and more nutritious food!

Adhering to the spirit of scientific rigor, scientists who study plant nutrition in Amway Nutrilite are constantly innovating technology. In order to extract the maximum nutritional value from plant fruits and vegetables, every process from raw material screening to extraction production is strictly controlled. In the extraction stage, Amway Nutrilite adopts exclusive extraction technologies-spray drying method and refraction window drying method, so as to retain the nutrients in plant fruits and vegetables to the maximum extent and provide consumers with nutritious, pure and safe healthy food.