Nutrition

Perceived or real health concerns, including nutritional guidelines, have led to changes in food technology, both in processing methods and in formulation. One company embarked in 1938 on fundamental studies of a vitamin in order to amend its process to conserve that micro-nutrient in yeast extract. As a result of subsequent process improvements based on precise knowledge, retention was raised from less than 40 per cent to more than 80 per cent of the vitamin present in the raw material yeast. The use of polyunsaturated oils in margarine and salad dressings is an example of formula change induced by nutritional considerations. Another is the attempt to reduce or replace salt in some products. Both pose problems, oxidation, flavour and keeping quality being the more important.

In the 1950s various brands of breakfast cereals and yeast extracts began to compete with each other in making sometimes exaggerated claims which were based on the fortification of the respective products with nutritionally desirable vitamins and/or minerals. Probably to everyone's relief this practice was stopped by the Vitamin and Minerals regulation. Food technology was using nutrition wrongly. In the early 1960s the range and variety of salad dressings was greatly increased. The company which took the lead in this realized that if it wanted to sell salad dressings, which in themselves are nutritionally trivial, it had to sell the salad habit, which is nutritionally significant. It did this, was joined by others and sales of dressings are now evidence of a positive and beneficial interaction of food technology with nutrition. More recently, in the wake of a keener awareness of the role of fibre in the diet, others have formulated products of higher fibre content.

Australian food technology generally has responded to nutritional pressures, especially in the past fifteen years, but has been bewildered by sometimes conflicting advice and constrained by the inability to reduce, say the salt content of a specific variety of cheese because that level of salt is crucial in determining the specific characteristics of that particular cheese. On the other hand, the H. J. Heinz Co. had no hesitation, once the point was made, of eliminating salt from its baby foods, to which it had been added as a flavour largely, it may be said, for the benefit of the mother.

In the 1980s Australian food technology was far more responsive to nutritional factors than it was at the beginning of the seventies, but it can only go so far. The consumer must ultimately choose for himself. But food technology can see that the information required to make an informed choice is available.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering