Food allergy is a chronic disease that is increasing all over the world, and it can even lead to a loss of life. To prevent any incidents resulting from food allergies, most countries keep strengthening their food allergen labeling requirements domestically and internationally, with a constant monitoring system against undeclared allergens and recall of offending products. In order to avoid economic losses to industry and damages to international relations from undeclared allergens, it is necessary to confirm each country’s regulatory policy on food allergen labeling prior to exportation. Another required action is to try for a reduction of the cross-contamination risk of the allergens during manufacturing and storage, which should be verified by using an accurate and reliable analysis of food allergens. This paper is intended to provide an introduction to the regulation of food allergen labeling by country, allergen management methods to avoid cross-contamination, and allergen detection methods using ELISA, PCR, and LC/ MS. Changes of allergenicity during thermal or nonthermal processing also will be investigated in our review. This review will be helpful for the food industry to better understand patients suffering from food allergies and to manage food allergens in food manufacturing.

Effects of a commercial scale intervention system combining ultraviolet (UV)-C and plasma treatments on the microbial decontamination of black pepper powder were investigated. The process parameters include treatment time, time for plasma accumulation before treatment, and water activity of black pepper powder. A significant reduction in the number of indigenous aerobic mesophilic bacteria in black pepper powder was observed after treatments lasted for ≥ 20 min (p<0.05) and the reduction was differed by powder manufacturer. The microbial reduction rates obtained by individual UV-C treatment, individual plasma treatment, and UV-C/plasma-combined treatment were 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0 log CFU/g, respectively, suggesting that the efficacy of the microbial inactivation was enhanced by treatment combination. Nonetheless, neither plasma accumulation time nor powder water activity affected the microbial inactivation efficacy of the combined treatment. The UV-C/plasma-combined treatment, however, decreased lightness of black pepper powder, and the decrease generally increased as operation time increased. The plasma accumulation time of 20 min resulted in significant reduction in both lightness and brown color. The results indicate that the commercial-scale intervention system combining treatments of UV-C and plasma has the potential to be applied in the food industry for decontaminating black pepper powder.

Various rheological methods to measure the hardness of instant cooked rice by a texture analyzer were investigated and compared. Specifically, instant white rice samples with a wide range of hardness were subjected to four different rheological tests with disk, cylinder, rod, and cone probe whose results were inter-correlated. All the measurements demonstrated that the hardness of instant rice was reduced with increasing moisture content and showed negatively linear relationships. Out of the four tests applied in this study, the highest coefficient of correlation (R2 = 0.9268) was observed distinctly in the cone probe test, where both compressive and shear forces can be applied to deform individual rice grains. However, the cylinder probe test had the lowest coefficient of correlation (R2 = 0.7247) because it may be ineffective in causing direct deformation of individual rice grains. Furthermore, when the hardness values (N) were converted to stress (Pa), highly linear correlations (R2 ≈ 0.99) were observed between the tests with similar probe geometry and force application.

Aronia has low preference because of astringent and bitter taste. Appropriate processing is essential for eating aronia. For the processing of aronia, the aim of this study is to provide basic information on the cultivar and ripening stages. Three varieties (Viking, Nero and McKenzie) were studied. We divided the stages of maturity into four levels based on color. The physicochemical properties were analyzed. In the case of hardness, the first stage of maturity was the highest, and there was no difference between varieties. As maturation progressed, brightness and yellowness gradually decreased, and redness was highest at the second stage. The sugar content was the lowest in the Viking and significantly increased with the maturity stage. The acidity was highest in the Viking. Nero showed the highest radical scavenging ability. Total polyphenols and flavonoids were the highest in Nero. The highest level was shown at the first stage by the ripening stage.