{"id":1273,"date":"2019-05-14T12:38:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T12:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/priorclavena.com\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2020-01-30T21:40:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T21:40:56","slug":"trends-in-retort-processing-goodbye-canned-food-hello-retort-pouches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.priorclave.com\/en-us\/2019\/05\/14\/trends-in-retort-processing-goodbye-canned-food-hello-retort-pouches\/","title":{"rendered":"Trends in Retort Processing: Goodbye Canned Food, Hello “Retort Pouches”"},"content":{"rendered":"

For hundreds of years retort processing<\/em> (i.e., “canning”) has made it possible to prepare spaghetti sauce in minutes\u2014instead of hours\u2014eat tuna regardless of how many thousands of miles you live from an ocean, and have veggies year-round.<\/p>\n

In terms of the production workflow and equipment, food and beverage retort processing has changed very little since the early 1800s:<\/p>\n

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  1. food is loaded into steel cans<\/li>\n
  2. the cans are sealed<\/li>\n
  3. the sealed cans are dumped into baskets<\/li>\n
  4. the baskets are loaded into “retorts” (i.e., room-sized steam autoclaves)<\/li>\n
  5. the sealed cans are autoclaved at about 235\u00ba for about two hours<\/li>\n
  6. the cans are cooled, inspected, labelled, and shipped<\/li>\n
  7. you buy the can, opened it, heat up your SpaghettiOs, and, Voil\u00e0! Bon app\u00e9tit, mon ch\u00e9ri!<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It’s a good technology, but an old one:\u00a0 <\/span>Cans are heavy and bulky.\u00a0 <\/span>Not only are they resource intensive to process, but also to ship and handle.\u00a0 <\/span>On top of all that, they’re plagued by “retort flavor<\/a>“\u2014the the flat, often metallic taste typical of canned foods.\u00a0 <\/span>Subsequently, they’re often loaded up with salt and sugar to make them more palatable\u2014and, unfortunately, much less healthy than they could be.<\/p>\n

    Increasing Efficiency and Convenience while Eliminating Retort Flavor <\/span><\/h2>\n

    The solution is the increasingly common “retort pouch.”\u00a0 <\/span>These are heavy-duty plastic pouches, originally developed for the U.S. Army’s MRE (“Meal, Ready-to-Eat<\/a>“) field rations.\u00a0 <\/span>They’re processed almost identically to canned foods (i.e., fill, seal, heat, ship, eat), but offer three key advantages:<\/p>\n