Impact of microwave processing on nutritional, sensory, and other quality attributes

For the last decades, microwave technology has been applied as a unit operation for food drying, thawing, blanching, cooking, or pasteurization. There are many advantages associated to its use, such as shorter treatment times, faster and selective heating, or energy efficiency, which in terms of food preservation usually result in processed food with less pronounced losses of sensory, nutritional, and other quality attributes. Nevertheless, there are still some drawbacks associated with the technology (complexity of the microwave heating phenomena, lack of heating uniformity, heating control devices, etc.) that make it essential to continue the research in this area. In this chapter, the main observations related to microwave technology application as a unit operation for the processing of different food products are discussed. Furthermore, a comparison in terms of food quality between microwave and conventional heating techniques and future trends will also be highlighted.