Acuff J C, Waterman K, Wu J, Murphy C M, Gallagher D, Ponder M A
Virginia Tech, Food Science and Technology Department, 1230 Washington St., Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Virginia Tech, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, 409 Durham Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA.
Heliyon. 2023 Jul 1;9(7):e17893. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17893. eCollection 2023 Jul.
There is a growing interest in using models to predict foodborne pathogen inactivation as a way to validate or verify preventive controls. Unlike liquid foods, solid, low water activity foods (LWAF) are heterogenous in composition and structure and do not transfer heat uniformly. Using models constructed from one food to predict pathogen inactivation on another LWAF is complex and may not always be possible, even if the foods have similar composition. Using models constructed from inactivation kinetics of three foodborne pathogens and a surrogate from vacuum-steam-pasteurized (72 and 82 °C) whole macadamia nuts and dried apricot halves, 3-log reductions were predicted for the same pathogens and foods of reduced size. Model fits (First-order, Weibull, and Gompertz) were significantly impacted by the food type regardless of particle size. Despite the foods being identical in composition with particle size as the only altered characteristic, best-fit models accurately predicted the 3-log reductions only 50% of the time, but the surrogate inactivation models provided conservative predictions for pathogen reductions, highlighting that a surrogate's model may be a suitable tool for predicting pathogen reduction on LWAFs.
人们越来越有兴趣使用模型来预测食源性病原体的失活，以此作为验证或核实预防控制措施的一种方式。与液态食品不同，固态、低水分活度食品（LWAF）在成分和结构上是异质的，且热量传递不均匀。使用基于一种食品构建的模型来预测另一种LWAF上病原体的失活很复杂，即使这些食品成分相似，也并非总是可行。利用从三种食源性病原体的失活动力学以及真空蒸汽巴氏杀菌（72和82°C）的完整澳洲坚果和半干杏干的替代物构建的模型，预测了相同病原体在尺寸减小后的食品上实现3个对数级的减少。无论颗粒大小如何，模型拟合（一阶、韦布尔和冈珀茨）都受到食品类型的显著影响。尽管这些食品成分相同，仅颗粒大小为唯一改变的特征，但最佳拟合模型仅在50%的时间内准确预测了3个对数级的减少，但替代物失活模型对病原体减少提供了保守的预测，这表明替代物的模型可能是预测LWAF上病原体减少的合适工具。
