Ready meals
Ready meals
New findings on VivOX 4, an all-natural preservative that is produced and marketed by Vitiva, suggest that effective anti-rancidity protection is conferred for various types of meat-based ready meals. This versatile oil-soluble, water-dispersible formula helps increase shelf life and reduces warmed over flavour (WOF), while retaining the important organoleptic characteristics of the product. Production of meat-based ready meals includes thermal processing that affects the fats present in food and increases their oxidative instability. This instability is even greater when foods are battered and fried, due to oil pick up of fried products such as chicken nuggets, battered fish etc. During cooling, freezing, transportation and warehousing, there is an increased exposure to oxygen and light, which accelerates unwanted changes of ready meals such as rancidity, organoleptics characteristics and appearance of WOF. By adding allergen-free VivOX 4 formula, the shelf life of meat-based ready meals can be extended by 2-5 times in comparison to control samples that utilise traditional synthetic ingredients, while still maintaining the original taste and flavour profile.
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TrueCut
TrueCut, a new adhesive technology specifically for paper, enables major enhancements to conversion speed and adheres better on both cardboard and during low temperature applications. This results in a strong combination of benefits for converters who are looking for superb on-press performance and for end users requiring the broadest possible window of applications. The adhesive gives up to 100% higher conversion speed compared with industry standards and can minimize or sometimes completely eliminate set-up time between rolls. Other benefits include fewer web breaks and a shorter ‘time to stick’ (with a threefold improvement vs. an existing alternative). Consistent conversion performance for paper applications, and minimum press downtime, can make a very important difference to productivity. TrueCut technology can substantially reduce production costs due to its outstanding stability on the press. Rolls can be changed quickly, with almost no adjustments needed when changed. This consistency and reliability brings quantifiable savings and extra capacity at no additional cost. Gaps between labels can also be made smaller to generate less waste, and die lifetime is increased thanks to lower-pressure die-cutting. This new adhesive enables a broader range of applications: label end users will see improved performance with variable information and logistic applications thanks to the increased tack on cardboard. The adhesive is compliant with European food regulation 1935/2004/EC as well as the German Recommendation (BfR) XIV, and can safely stand in direct contact with dry, moist and fatty foodstuff. Paired with better adhesion at lower temperatures this innovation is very widely applicable in the food segment.

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Edited by John Gilbert
Inherent toxicants and processing contaminants are non-essential, bioactive substances whose levels in foods can be difficult to control. This volume covers both types of compound for the first time, examining their beneficial as well as their undesirable effects in the human diet. Chapters have been written as individually comprehensive reviews, and topics have been selected to illustrate recent scientific advances in understanding of the occurrence and mechanism of formation, exposure/risk assessment and developments in the underpinning analytical methodology. A wide range of contaminants are examined in detail, including pyrrolizidine alkaloids, glucosinolates, phycotoxins and mycotoxins. Several process contaminants (eg acrylamide and furan), which are relatively new but which have a rapidly growing literature, are also covered. Providing a practical reference for specialist toxicologists (chemists and food chemists), hygienists, government officials and anyone who needs to be aware of the main issues concerning toxicants and process contaminants in food, this book is also a valuable introduction to the subject for post-graduate students.
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Thanks to its high-resolution and height-adjustable line scanners as well as its powerful image processing, the I 410 model from Multivac Marking & Inspection ensures that reliable marking and quality inspection from above and below is achieved. The space-saving inspection system can be used flexibly as a stand-alone solution at the end of a packaging machine or it can be integrated seamlessly into a line.
The areas of use for the I 410 range from completeness checks on the packs, through to presence and position inspection of the labels, and right up to checking the print – and this includes pattern and character recognition, character verification and inspection of legibility and codes. The progressive image-capturing technology enables extremely good images in high resolution to be transmitted and verified even at the highest speeds within the packaging procedure.
The I 410 is designed in the Multivac Hygienic Design for use in the food industry, and it is equipped with a separate transport conveyor. The packs can either be fed in manually or transferred from an upstream transport unit. Since a motorized ejection device ensures that reject packs are ejected consistently, compressed air is not required to operate the inspection system.
The system is operated simply and reliably via the Multivac HMI 2.0. Where the unit is installed in a packaging line, it is controlled centrally via the control terminal of the packaging machine, and all processes can be controlled intuitively on the 12 inch LCD touchscreen. Multivac Line Control ensures that efficient line integration is achieved, and it enables product changes to be carried out very quickly since the setting parameters for the particular product are saved in the recipe. The inspection results are also transferred to the line-motion control of the Multivac machine, so that packs detected as rejects can be tracked and then reliably ejected from the line. This ensures that only faultless packs reach the retail outlets.
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