Determination of Selected Trace Metals' Contents and their Health Risk Assessment in the Commercially Available Soft Drinks in Pakista

Abstract

Processing of food refers to a sequential use of chemical or mechanical operations in order to alter or preserve the food (Weaver et al., 2014). Food processing has been described as ' a series of one or more applications including washing, grinding, mixing, heating, cooling, extracting, freezing, fermenting, extruding, filtering, centrifuging, concentrating, frying, ilTadiating, drying, microwaving as well as packaging' (Floros et at., 20 10). Food processing has been used for a long time. The ancient familiar stone tools used for the processing of food are 2.1-2.6 million years old (Seeman et al., 2008). Food processing has made progress through number of years from using fire to roast the meat around 1.8 million years ago, to the fonnulation of numerous methods like, cooking, preserving and fractionation by using process of heating, freezing, drying, fennentation and pickling to 3D printing in current period (Kim, 2013; Liu et at., 2017). The necessity of food processing to transform inedible raw materia ls to edible nutritious food, and the need for biotransfonnation and preservation of food has been testified broadly (Augustin et al., 2016). With passage of time awareness related to health is increasing in the world and fresh, healthy, viable and tasty food with least effects on environment is demanded by the consumers. Unblemished and green nonthennal technologies are prefened for food processing because traditional processing methods can ruin many nutrients which are sensitive to heat, while the cautious processing methods, specially nonthennal processing such as, pulsed electric field, high hydrostatic pressure processing, cold atmospheric plasma and novel thermal processing (microwave assisted process, application of superheated steam and ohmic heating) appeared to enhance the detention of nutrients (KnOtT and Augustin, 2021). Therefore, numerous attempts have led to the conclusion that processing is a deep-rooted and acknowledged operation for producing food products