High hydrostatic pressure
Use of pressure in food processing goes back to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is originated in the bottled foods invented by Nicolas Appert at that time. Foods were hermetically sealed in a can and then heated. Vapour in the can raised the inner pressure to several atmospheres of pressure and the foods were pasteurised/sterilised.
High hydrostatic pressure (HHP, 300–900 MPa) is able to destroy or inactivate vegetative bacterial cells. Just to dive you an idea of how much of a squeeze that is: A depth of 10,868–10,916 m, which is found at the deepest bottom of the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, is comparable to ca. 110 MPa.
However, this technology is not effective in the case of endospores (such as those in the case of cereus), unless a pre-treatment is carried out at lower pressures (300–400 MPa) in order to allow germination of existing spores. Anyway, some non-germinating spores could remain in the food matrix after HHP treatments, and therefore, at industrial level, HHP is usually combined with thermal treatments (50°C to 100°C), or in some cases with essential oil components. One important advantage of HHP treatments is that they do not alter the organoleptic and nutritional properties of the food matrixes (taste, vitamins, etc.), a great advantage with respect to high temperature methods.
Further reading on high hydrostatic pressure
Kazutaka Yamamoto (2017) Food processing by high hydrostatic pressure, Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, 81:4, 672-679, https://doi.org/10.1080/09168451.2017.1281723.
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