Impact of High-Pressure Processing on Food Quality

High-Pressure Processing (HPP) application is increasing at food industries as a possible alternative to heat treatments for food preservation and processing. It is being mainly applied to inactivate microorganisms and enzymes, with lower degradation of flavors and nutrients, minimizing the losses of beneficial ingredients, resulting in distinctive organoleptic properties of foods. Since HPP acts on volume compression, due to the low change in volume on low-molecular compounds, such as vitamins and other functional compounds, the effects of this technology are expected to be minimum on these compounds unlike thermal treatment. Alike, HPP has also a lower effect on flavor and color compounds of food products, compared to the color changes and formation of off-flavors caused by thermal pasteurization. Thus, in this chapter, HPP application on different food products will be addressed, i.e., fruits, vegetables, fish and meat products, milk and cheese, and its effects on the nutritional, textural and sensorial properties will be discussed.