The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning outcomes

The course is focused on the problematics and interactions among product, process, storage and packaging within the production processes of the food industry.
Aim of the course is to provide the students:
• basic knowledges and skills to understand how to deal with the food production problematics. In particular the teaching will focus on the interaction between the raw materials (ingredients) and the various production steps, in order to obtain a final product respecting the required technical, safety and commercial characteristics;
• technical skills to set up the appropriate technological processes in order to reach and optimize the requested qualitative characteristics of a food product;
• basic knowledges about properties and characteristics of food packaging materials in order to select the most appropriate taking into account the production process, the requested shelf-life, safety issues and costs.
In order to reach the set goals, specific case-studies will be discussed during the teaching so that the students will acquire a thorough vision of real food production processes. With this aim specific visits to food industries will be organized

Program

Food products characteristics: safety, technical and commercial characteristic – how and why. The practical approach to the production of a food item: row material-process-product, interaction and limits. Food preservation, theoretical and practical approach; available technologies, potential applications and limits. Basic elements of food packaging. Basics of food legislation. Detailed description of selected case-studies: fruit and vegetable products; eggs and egg products; fish products; bread and bakery products; pasta, chocolate products; dairy and milk products. The various production processes will be discussed in details with respect to food safety, commercial requirements and processing opportunities and limits. Practical work will be related to the solution of technical issues while technical visits to food processing plant will be also organized. If possible specific seminars will be organized inviting professionals of the food industries. Besides the suggested working texts some reading material could be delivered to the students after the lessons.

Bibliography

Examination Methods

Oral exam - Initially the student will be asked to discuss one of the topics of the course that he considered of the utmost interest. Afterwards, the teacher will present a practical problem that may be faced in the real working life and will evaluate how the candidate will organize and utilize the scientific and technical skills acquired during the study to highlight a possible solution to the problem. In this way the student will be oriented to study for acquiring not a mere "theoretical knowledge" but a "practical" one.