Microbial food cultures are live bacteria, yeasts or moulds used in food production. Microbial food cultures carry out the fermentation process in foodstuffs. Used by humans since the Neolithic period (around 10 000 years BC)[1] fermentation helps to preserve perishable foods and to improve their nutritional and organoleptic qualities (in this case, taste, sight, smell, touch). As of 1995, fermented food represented between one quarter and one third of food consumed in Central Europe.[2] More than 260 different species of microbial food culture are identified and described for their beneficial use in fermented food products globally,[3] showing the importance of their use.
The scientific rationale of the function of microbes in fermentation started to be built with the discoveries of Louis Pasteur in the second half of the 19th century.[4][5] Extensive scientific study continues to characterize microbial food cultures traditionally used in food fermentation taxonomically, physiologically, biochemically and genetically. This allows better understanding and improvement of traditional food processing and opens up new fields of applications.
- ^ Prajapati, J.B.; Nair, B.M. (2003). Farnworth, E.R. (ed.). The history of fermented foods in Fermented Functional Foods. CRC Press, Boca Raton, New York, London, Washington DC. pp. 1–25.
- ^ Holzapfel, W.H.; Schillinger, U.; Geisen, R. (January 1995). "Biological Preservation of Foods with Reference to Protective Cultures, Bacteriocins and Food-Grade Enzymes". International Journal of Food Microbiology. 24 (3): 343–362. doi:10.1016/0168-1605(94)00036-6. PMID 7710912.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Bourdichon, F., Casaregola, S., Farrokh, C., Frisvad, J.C., Gerds, M.L., Hammes, W.P., Harnett, J., Huys, G., Laulund, S., Ouwehand, A., Powell, I.B., Prajapati, J.B., Seto, Y., Ter Schure, E., Van Boven, A., Vankerckhoven, V., Zgoda, A., Tuijtelaars, S., Bech Hansen, E. 2012 87–97was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Wyman, J. (1862). "Spontaneous generation". British Medical Journal. 2 (90): 311–312. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.90.311. PMC 2288299. PMID 20744126.
- ^ Farley, J.; Geison, G.L. (1974). "Science, politics and spontaneous generation in nineteenth-century France: the Pasteur-Pouchet debate". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 48 (2): 161–198. PMID 4617616.