[Domestic News of Packaging and Printing Industry Network] Today, China's food industry shows a diversified development trend, but there are many "Junk food" among them. With the increasing pursuit of healthy living by consumers, healthy nutrition has become one of the keywords for consumers to choose products, and food companies have started exploring the path of healthy and nutritious food. Among them, using drying technology instead of frying technology has become one of the ways for many food companies to upgrade their processes.
Instant noodles are one of the larger convenience foods in China's market, especially in the past two years. The trend of high-end and healthy development has led to a gradual recovery in its market. According to statistical data, the overall sales volume of instant noodles in 2018 reached 40.3 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%, and the sales volume increased by 8.0%. So, how does the instant noodles, which have been criticized as "Junk food", achieve healthy upgrading?
As is well known, as the main body of instant noodles, the production process of dough cakes has always been mainly fried. But now, fried instant noodles are becoming increasingly unpopular in the market, and non fried instant noodles produced using drying technology are increasingly favored by consumers. It is understood that there are two main types of non fried instant noodles on the market, one is microwave drying, and the other is hot air drying. Different production technologies give instant noodles different flavors.
Microwave drying equipment is required for the production of microwave dried pancakes. Microwaves can penetrate the inside and outside of objects, causing internal molecules to rub against each other and generate heat. The heating speed is fast, the uniformity is high, and due to the thermal and biological effects of microwave drying technology, it can play a sterilization role while drying. However, hot air drying equipment is usually used in the production of hot air dried pancakes, which uses heated air as a heat source. Currently, there are various types of hot air drying equipment available on the market, which can meet different production needs.
In addition to instant noodles, fruit and vegetable crisps have also been one of the successful "transformation" foods in the past two years. According to the national light industry standard QB2076-95 [1], fruit and vegetable crisps refer to the production of fruits and vegetables as the main raw materials using vacuum frying and dehydration processes. But frying is clearly not in line with the trend of health, and the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables will also be greatly lost. Driven by market demand, the application of vacuum freeze-drying equipment in the production of fruit and vegetable crisps is becoming increasingly widespread.
Vacuum freeze-drying refers to the process of first freezing a water containing material into a solid, and then directly sublimating the frozen water into steam under low temperature and pressure conditions, thereby achieving the drying of the material. The use of vacuum freeze-drying technology to produce fruit and vegetable crisps can effectively protect the volatile and easily oxidizing components in the material, and due to drying in a frozen state, it can better maintain the original shape and structure of the material.
The expansion of the application scope of vacuum freeze-drying technology has also brought benefits to the freeze-drying equipment industry. According to data, it is expected that the global freeze-drying machine market will reach 788 million US dollars by 2021, and the compound growth rate is expected to reach 7.5% from 2016 to 2021. At the same time, freeze-drying equipment is also moving towards high capacity, high speed, low failure, easy operation, high precision, high safety, and long service life