Sublimated products - a valuable gift of science to mankind

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Innovative technologies burst into our everyday life like a whirlwind. New hygiene products and household chemicals, never-before-seen kitchen utensils, consumer electronics, high-tech fabrics successfully coexist in modern homes. Innovation has made its way to our table, to our plates and glasses. In recent decades, due to the interest of people in the topic of he althy eating, freeze-dried products have become increasingly popular.

The principle of physical sublimation

Sublimation, or sublimation, is the transformation of substances from a solid directly into a gaseous state, excluding the liquid stage.

Freeze drying, or lyophilization, is the process of extracting liquid from frozen biological objects. It is based on the evaporation of ice contained in frozen foods, that is, its transition directly into vaporousstate excluding the liquid phase.

The sublimation method was developed at the beginning of the 20th century by the talented Russian inventor G. I. Lappa-Starzhenetsky, who back in 1921 patented the method of sublimation under reduced pressure. For the first time in the world, freeze-drying was used in the forties in the USSR for the conservation of serum, blood plasma and penicillin.

Secrets of industrial production

Freeze-dried products are made by vacuum sublimation.

Prior to processing, the original natural product is flash-frozen at temperatures down to -200 °C. Its advantage, unlike conventional freezing, is that ice crystals are formed in biological tissues so small that they are not able to destroy even cell membranes.

Then the frozen food is placed in a hermetically sealed chamber, from which air is pumped out. After lowering the pressure in the chamber, the temperature is gradually increased. The ice evaporates and the resulting steam is pumped out. When all the ice crystals from the products have evaporated, the technological process is finished.

Next, an inert gas, nitrogen or helium, enters the pressure equalization chamber. The chamber opens, the dried products are unloaded, hung out, packaged in gas-vapor-tight bags. Air is pumped out of the package, nitrogen is pumped in instead, and the bag is sealed.

Freeze-dried products: benefits and harms

Freeze drying ensures the safety of all withoutexclusion of useful properties and organoleptic characteristics of products. This method perfectly preserves fruits and berries, vegetables and mushrooms, greens, dairy products and confectionery, meat and fish, soups and cereals.

Usage experience shows that sublimates even surpass natural analogues in nutritional and taste properties. It is hard to imagine that someone is happy to drink natural beetroot and cabbage juice or celery and parsley juice, and drinks that were used in the preparation of similar freeze-dried products have the most excellent reviews. Freeze-dried berries and fruits, as well as dairy products, were also highly rated.

Freeze-dried products do not contain any preservatives or dyes, and this is their main advantage in comparison with other long-term storage and instant products.

The only danger that may accompany the purchase of sublimates is low-quality raw materials used by an unscrupulous manufacturer. You can protect yourself by purchasing products from trusted companies.

Sublimation is the solution to many problems

Freeze-dried products can be widely used both as fast food products and as industrial semi-finished products in confectionery, food concentrate, meat and dairy, perfumery and other industries.

In the production of fermented milk products, dry easily soluble antibiotics, viral and bacterial preparations, dietary supplements, starter cultures and enzymes, vacuum sublimationhas no alternative.

Freeze-dried products are the best option for providing food on long hikes and trips. The method of their use is as simple as possible: water is added to the product, and it is ready. It should only be remembered that the rate of recovery of the sublimate depends on the temperature of the water with which it is poured.

Homemade

The process of vacuum sublimation is technologically complex, requires special knowledge and training, uses specific industrial equipment.

Therefore, amateur recommendations on the Web on how to cook freeze-dried foods at home can be a good help to tourists and hunters who want to reduce the weight of luggage by drying cooked meals, but they have nothing to do with vacuum sublimation of quick-frozen foods.

Another thing is drying food in the cold, as the peoples of the northern countries have done for centuries. Chunks of meat and fish weathered in the cold do not deteriorate, they become lighter, while maintaining their size, shape and organoleptic properties.

Sublimates are widespread all over the world, in the Russian Federation they are only gaining popularity. But every day it becomes more and more obvious that they are a great option for a he althy diet. The sublimated product is a valuable innovative find, a gift of science to humanity.