Rajeev K. Singla

This brief outlines the state-of-art of the food industry within the Indian Sub-continent, providing a detailed insight into the current science of nutrition and industrial technology.The Hygiene, Integrity, Traceability and Sharing (HITS) strategy has been proposed recently as a coordinated and powerful tool to contextualize the plethora of different menaces for the food consumer. The book examines this approach from eight different perspectives, with a particular emphasis on the Indian Subcontinent. Topics such as food additives, the importance of water in the food industry, the use of antioxidants, and novel food preservation methods are used to illustrate these points of view.This book is particularly appealing as a guide for graduate and undergraduate courses covering food production, food safety, and the training of teachers working in these science areas.

This book discusses the scope and limitations of the antimicrobial and antioxidant properties of foods as medicines or medicinal coadjuvants in traditional Indian herbal therapies. The first chapter introduces readers to the relevance of the Ayurveda system, its holistic classification approach, applications of selected herbs and the demonstrable efficacy of herbal extracts in terms of antimicrobial susceptibility. In turn, the second chapter discusses the antimicrobial properties and kinetic mechanisms of inhibition ascribed to selected vegetable extracts. The third chapter addresses the antioxidant power of phenolic compounds from vegetable products and herbal extracts. The book closes with a review of natural antioxidant agents’ role in the treatment of metabolic disorders. Written from an Indian perspective, this book unravels the chemistry of the traditional Indian diet and its impact on health. Further, it can serve as a reference for other traditional productswith similar health claims.

This Brief provides an overview of different analytical methods and techniques for the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of Maillard Reactions and their reaction products in foods during processing and storage. Reliable methodology for the investigation of Maillard Reactions and their products are of utmost importance in food analysis: since Maillard Reactions can on the one hand be desirable and advantageous, influencing the colors, flavors and odors of food products, they can on the other hand also produce detrimental compounds afflicting the consumers’ health (e.g. furfurals, furosine, or acrylamide). This Brief introduces different analytical methods, which can be used to investigate and characterize Maillard Reactions and their products in foods, including for example capillary electrophoresis, high performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection, UV-VIS spectrophotometry, fluorescence, electronic nose, gravimetric systems, and many more. The chapters exemplify how the analytical techniques can be applied for assessing and evaluating different Maillard Reaction products in foods. Readers will find basic information, as well as practical hints and guidelines for application in their own laboratory.