Study on drying acceleration on packed frozen food during storage.

Drying during the frozen storage of food is the principal factor for the deterioration of frozen food. Almost all of undesired reactions such as discoloration, freezer burn and texture change would be induced by drying. Many of processed food are packed but the drying would occur even inside the package. Though the mechanisms of drying of packed food has not been fully investigated, we have assumed that the temperature fluctuation during frozen storage was the principal factor for accelerating drying. In this study, we modified a commercial low temperature incubator to let the temperature intentionally fluctuated and made a storage experiment for a few days. The result indicated that temperature fluctuation accelerated the drying. Then we proposed a physical model that explained how the temperature fluctuation accelerated drying. Through the numerical calculation and simulation, the mechanism we proposed was confirmed to be almost valid.