Studies of the effects of high pressures on foods date back over a century. In 1899, Bert Hite of the Agriculture Research Stations in Morganstown, West Virginia, USA, designed and constructed a high pressure unit to pasteurize milk and other food products.
Hite originally experimented with the application of high hydrostatic pressure on foods and food microorganisms. It was the first time demonstrated in the destruction bacteria. He reported that the high pressure processing of food involves the application of hydrostatic pressure typically in the order of 100 MPa and above.
He showed that the shelf life of raw milk could be extended by about 4 days after pressure treatment at 600 MPa for one hour at room temperature.
High pressure processing or pascalization is named after Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French scientist who describe how contained fluids are affected by pressure.
The drawback of this method it is costly to implement.
Scientists reactivated research on high pressure processing from the end of the 1980’s. This high pressure process consists of applying an isostatic pressure to a food place in a high pressure vessel.
Food products stabilized by high pressure were first introduced into the market by Japanese food companies in 1993.
Today, with advances in computational stress analysis and new raw material, high capacity pressure systems can be manufactured to allow reliable high pressure treatment at even high pressures.
Several high pressure foods have commercialized, including juices and beverages, vegetable products, meat products, seafood and fish.
High Pressure Food Processing in history
