Newswise — At Sunday morning's keynote session of the 2009 Annual Meeting & Food Expo® of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), incoming IFT President Marianne Gillette and President-Elect Bob Gravani announced and presented four companies with the 2009 IFT Food Expo Innovation Awards. The recipients are Ecolab Inc.; EnWave Corp.; National Center for Food Safety & Technology; and National Starch Food Innovation.
A panel of eight jurors from industry, academia, and government with broad expertise in research & product development, processing & packaging technology, and food safety selected the four companies and their innovations from 49 qualified entries. Only companies exhibiting at the 2009 IFT Food Expo in Anaheim were eligible. Judging criteria included degree of innovation, technical advancement, benefits to food manufacturers and consumers, and scientific merit. "¢ Ecolab Incorporated garnered the 2009 IFT Food Expo Innovation Award for its peroxyacetic acid-based commercial sterilant, which sterilizes plastic bottles at lower temperatures than hydrogen peroxide, thereby reducing energy. It also mitigates bottle shrinkage and peroxide residuals.
"¢ EnWave Corporation won the award for its nutraREV dehydration technology. The radiant energy vacuum technology delivers rapid, low-temperature dehydration of fruits, vegetables, snack foods, and herbs. It uses less than one-third the energy of freeze drying with one-sixth the capital cost.
"¢ National Center for Food Safety & Technology was honored for its pressure-assisted thermal sterilization—an FDA-accepted processing technology that combines mild heat with high pressure to produce commercially sterile low-acid food products with equivalent or better quality than frozen foods.
"¢ National Starch Food Innovation captured the 2009 IFT Food Expo Innovation Award for its NOVATION starches, which can be used to manufacture products such as salad dressings with texture attributes and process tolerance that were only possible with modified food starches. The starches are labeled as corn starch on the ingredient statement.
About IFT Founded in 1939, the Institute of Food Technologists is a nonprofit scientific society with more than 20,000 individual members working in food science, food technology, and related professions in industry, academia, and government. IFT serves as a conduit for multidisciplinary science thought leadership, championing the use of sound science through knowledge sharing, education, and advocacy. For more information on IFT, visit www.ift.org.
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