Low water activity foods usually do not support growth of pathogens. However, in recent years, a number of outbreaks associated with low water activity foods occurred, making people have a new understanding of microorganisms about low water activity foods and resulting in the safety of these foods becoming a major concern. Traditional thermal sterilization methods are difficult to be applied in low water activity foods because of its poor heat transfer and strong heat resistance of microorganisms. Radio frequency (RF) is considered as one of the most potential technologies in food industry and has an excellent prospect on content of the advantages of rapid and uniform heating. The Principle of RF-Sterilization is similar to Microwave, but RF has lower frequency and wider wavelength, therefore RF penetration depth is more suitable for Sterilization. For the pre-packaged food, there is few report on the effect of RF on the food and packaging materials. This presentation aims to discuss the influence of RF through comparing to Microwave.

• Yali Tang(Department of Packaging Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Giangnan University)