Packaging for Preservation of Snack Food

Abstract

The definition of snack food adopted in the Introduction to this book precludes the consideration here of every single food used as a snack but includes consideration of the majority of those that depend for safety, longevity, and maintenance of characteristic organoleptic qualities upon the kind, quality, and methodology of their packaging. Twenty years ago there was no difficulty defining a snack because only a few products (e.g., potato chips, nuts, cookies, etc.) were regarded as such. With the spectacular growth in this market—largely due to the advent of extrusion cooking—we need to further separate liquid (instant soups, pot noodles) from solid snacks that require either no or minimal heating or to satisfy the requirement of a hot meal. Cooked foods verging on full meals are now embraced by the wider definition of snacks and it is here that much packaging development has taken place, catalyzed by the mushrooming invasion of microwave ovens into the domestic kitchen, projected to be about 43% for the United Kingdom and 70% for the USA in 1989.