Interest of the modelling approach to predict the quality of processed foods - the example of salted meat products

International audience; Experimental results from literature on the evolution of food quality during meat treatments are very difficult to use in practice to improve food quality since they often correspond to a specific equipment and a few process conditions. This leads to contradictions between studies and makes difficult to transpose results from one case to another. Mathematical modelling which combines transfers phenomena to chemical reactions is appropriate to respond to this situation. This paper illustrates how this has been applied to predict the final quality of cooked meat and dry-cured ham. The approach presented in this paper can be generalized to other foods and other processes to find out the best scenarios to obtain a targeted quality by taking into account both initial food characteristics and types of industrial equipment.