Shelf studies play a crucial part in the research and development of new products. They are not just essential for 
keeping up with the regulatory needs and requirements of labelling of product with the best before date, expiry date etc., but also plays a much bigger role in the product life-cycle and its quality.
Shelf-life of Foods
Before you begin to understand the shelf-life of foods, it is essential for you to know that foods are active, complex and diverse systems where physicochemical, enzymatic and microbiological reactions are taking place at a time. These reactions have serious outcomes in regard to texture, shelf-life and flavor. Food preservation depends on the knowledge and understanding of the working of these reactions, and successfully limiting the ones which are most responsible for spoilage or loss of required characteristics and at times the channeling of other reactions towards profitable changes. Essentially, a food’s shelf life can be defined as the timespan for which it will retain an acceptable level of its eatable quality – from sensory to safety point of view. There are four important elements in this process –
- Formulation
- Processing
- Packaging
- Storage Conditions
In order to gain knowledge of expected food shelf-life, you must,
- Get an understanding of the concerted series of physicochemical/biochemical reactions that occur in any given food material, and
- Recognize the process which is responsible for loss or spoilage of desirable food characteristics like nutrients, odor, flavor and/or texture.
Food scientists are able to segregate and model the data on the appropriate physicochemical / biochemical changes which are occurring in foods for estimating the period for which they will retain an acceptable level of eating quality from a sensory and safety perspective.
Shelf studies that are properly conducted help in ensuring that the product quality is maintained all through the product life-cycle and it greatly reduces instances of customer complaints concerning to product quality. Therefore, studies regarding shelf life help in establishing the product as a good quality product in the market and it greatly strengthens the brand value of the products.
For more on this determining product shelf-life join a live webinar by expert speaker Steven Wachs to determine the steps required to set-up a stability study as well as understand the results which will estimate the shelf life of a product. The session will be using regressing models that will help in modeling the relationship shared between response variable(s) and the time. Also, other models that are useful in describing non-linear degradation over time as well as methods to handle non-normal response data will be discussed. You will finally learn how to use accelerating variables which will be used to shorten the study time and the models. The webinar also includes various examples to illustrate the models discussed, in a better and more understandable way.
