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A doctoral thesis from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) has proven critical temperature at which the water is heated to prevent related to powdered infant diseases.

"The optimum is to preheat the water, without the product, to a minimum of 70 degrees, pour at this temperature and cool the bottle gradually," advises the author of the thesis, Juan Pablo Huertas Baquero, to avoid the presence of Cronobacter sakazakii, a pathogenic microorganism meningitis can generate high mortality and serious sequelae in newborns.

The researcher also recommended not to keep the product not ingested by the baby because "the bacteria has shown genetic mechanisms of response to very strong stress."

"The main objective of this thesis was to study the response of microorganisms in food when subjected to heat treatments that are usually applied in the food industry," explains Alfredo Palop, director of research with Arturo Esnoz.

"The effect of the combination of heat treatment naturally occurring antimicrobial nisin and citral were studied, and an interesting limiting the growth of surviving microorganisms was observed," the researchers added the School of Agriculture.

"Thanks to the results obtained with the heat exchanger and adding natural antimicrobial could optimize the heat treatment, improving product quality, reducing energy consumption and while ensuring their food security," summarizes the author of the thesis.

For the study of the heating rates the researchers constructed a heat exchanger that reproduced pilot plant scale heat treatments commonly used in the food industry. "

The heat exchanger designed, unlike those used in the field, provides information about the behavior of the microbial population during the heating process.

The realization of this PhD thesis has been possible thanks to funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology and FEDER (AGL 2010-19775 project) has also funded the predoctoral scholarship PhD (BES 2011-046580).

Source: UPCT