Moisture Content Distribution and Moisture Diffusion in Foods During Heating

“The mechanism of drying has been the subject of scientific study for more than 100 years, but it is still not thoroughly understood. External factors such as air temperature, pressure, humidity and velocity are governed by relatively simple and well known laws, but not the internal transfer of moisture.” Although Van Arsdel wrote this in 1973, the internal transfer of moisture is still not fully understood. One of the reasons for this is that until now there has been no way to measure the local water content inside a sample during a drying or heating process. A special fibre optic instrument has now been developed at SIK to measure the local water content, however. This instrument has been used in this project, in which the water transport in meat during heating has been studied, particularly in terms of the influence of meat fibre direction.