Microwave heating is an effective volumetric heating method that can potentially beused in high temperature-short-time sterilization to produce high quality shelf-stable packagedfoods. Commercial microwave sterilization processes are currently used in Japan and Belgium,but are not used in the US, due to stringent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulationsfor food safety. Research has been conducted at Washington State University (WSU), incollaboration with several government and industrial partners to develop a technology that canpass FDA approval. The microwave sterilization technology developed at WSU relies on the useof 915 MHz frequency and a single mode design. Very good results have been obtained forrelatively homogeneous foods such as mashed potato, fish fillets and chicken breast. But thereis a need to establish reliable methods for the development of commercial thermal proces sesthat can obtain regulatory approval. The objective of this study was to develop reliable means tolocate cold spots in foods during microwave sterilization process and to monitor temperatures ofthose locations needed for developing thermal processing procedures.Specifically, a method was developed that relies on chemical marker formation in foods tolocate the cold and hot spots in packaged foods such as mashed potato after heating in the
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