BOULDER – A new study has revealed that microwave reheating of hotdogs or frankfurters for 75 seconds at high power can offer protection against pathogens that cause foodborne illness.
Microwave ovens are commonly used to cook and reheat food; however, these appliances often provide non-uniform heating, which may produce hot and cold spots within food products being heated.
The uneven distribution of heat could lead to the survival of pathogens in contaminated food cooked in microwave ovens.
During the study, researchers evaluated different power and time combinations of microwave oven heating for inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes on inoculated and stored frankfurters.
The study showed that highest reductions of Listeria monocytogenes contamination were obtained when frankfurters were reheated at high power for 75 seconds.
Standing time after treatment may also play a role in obtaining a more uniform distribution of heat, by conduction, after the microwave power is off and can improve microbial destruction in food.
The hotdogs that were formulated with antimicrobials, which inhibited growth of the pathogen during product storage, displayed a decrease in Listeria monocytogenes counts after microwave treatments at high power for 60-75 seconds, regardless of storage time or packaging condition.
The effectiveness of the 75 second-high power treatment depended on the contamination level of the pathogen on the hotdogs, which in turn, was related to the length of product storage and packaging condition
“Microwave oven reheating instructions must be designed specifically for each type of product and consider variations in microwave appliance power, amount of food to be reheated, age of the product and the presence of antimicrobial compounds in the formulation of the food,” said Colorado State University researcher and IFT member expert
The study appears in the Journal of Food Science.
@chels I know what you mean, its hard to find good help these days. People now days just don’t have the work ethic they used to have. I mean consider whoever wrote this post, they must have been working hard to write that good and it took a good bit of their time I am sure. I work with people who couldn’t write like this if they tried, and getting them to try is hard enough as it is.
Hi,Thank you for the cool post, there are loads of useful insight that I believe lots of guys donn’t know.
I just subscribed to your RSS feed, not sure if I did it accordingly though? Nice article by the way.
Thanks for writing about this. There’s a lot of important tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your web site. I’m impressed – I try to keep a couple blogs reasonably up-to-date, but it’s a struggle sometimes. You’ve done a big job with this one. How do you do it?
Just to say nice site and interesting posts. If any readers are interested in lymphedema treatment they can check this site out