Preparing foods to meet nutritive and eating quality requirements

The preparation of food to meet nutritive and eating quality requirements can be achieved in various types of catering systems in which different inputs are involved. Periods of warm-holding are obviously one major factor in reducing quality of cooked food and should therefore be eliminated or minimized. Systems which can assist in this matter, such as cook-freeze, cook-chill and en-route heating of meals-on-wheels, are discussed. However, in practice, some degree of warm-holding does occur and will continue to occur even in well-controlled catering systems and therefore the quantifying of quality losses in different foods warm-held under various conditions is of value. In this connection, some of the data which currently exist are discussed but further knowledge would be desirable.