Development of a generalised equilibrium modified atmosphere model and its application to the Taleggio cheese

The food metabolic processes influence the gas composition of packaged products: by finely tuning the gas fluxes through the packaging, the aerobic and anaerobic respiration processes can be efficiently exploited to regulate the equilibrium gas concentrations. In this work, we present a generalised model able to predict the evolution of gases in micro-perforated equilibrium MAP, with a detailed evaluation of fluxes through the perforations by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics. It was found that the Sherwood number for the studied microperforations is 0.715 and it was confirmed via experiments on packaging with oxygen-depleted atmospheres. The kinetic model was experimentally validated on a smear short-ripened soft cheese (Taleggio) whose complex surface microbiota confer to the product a non-trivial respiration behaviour. Cheese slices were packed with three different micro-perforated solutions (one 120 mu m diameter hole, two 90 mu m diameter holes, and five 90 mu m diameter holes) achieving three different equilibrium gas compositions with good model predictions. The model was applied to literature data with success, thus the model can be deemed general and applicable to many different systems.

Automated summary

The food metabolic processes affect the gas composition of packaged products by adjusting gas fluxes through the packaging. A generalized model was introduced to predict gas evolution in micro-perforated equilibrium MAP, successfully applied to experimental data on soft cheese. The model's versatility and applicability to various systems was confirmed through successful application to literature data.