Requeijão, a Portuguese whey cheese, was selected as a case study of a highly perishable dairy product and stored at 0.1 (AP) and 100 MPa (HS) at variable room temperature (RT) (≈17–21° C) and compared with refrigeration (RT) (4° C), during two storage periods, 24 hr and 10 days. After 24 hr at AP/RT, Requeijão presented microbial counts above 6.00 log CFU/g, while after HS, total aerobic mesophiles and Enterobacteriaceae growth was inhibited. For lactic acid bacteria and yeasts and molds, HS showed an additional microbial inactivation effect, decreasing approximately 1.5 and 3.5 log CFU/g, to values below the detection limit (<1.0 log CFU/g) during the 24 hr experiment. In the second storage experiment (10 days), HS allowed to achieve counts below the detection limit, maintaining them throughout the storage period, and also the physicochemical parameters were unaffected. Thus, HS results clearly point to Requeijão shelf‐life extension compared to RF.
Practical applications
Hyperbaric storage (HS) at room temperature (RT) is emerging as a new food preservation methodology that acts by microbial growth inhibition similarly to refrigeration. However, HS allows significant energetic costs reduction, since it only implies energy costs during compression/decompression phases (few minutes), and no additional energy is needed to control the temperature or to maintain the product under pressure for long periods as opposed to refrigeration. This is undoubtedly a great advantage for HS, since energy savings implied will greatly reduce costs throughout the storage period. As a consequence, HS also becomes an environmentally friendlier technology, with a carbon footprint estimated to be about 26‐fold lower compared to refrigeration storage. This is one of the few studies concerning HS on solid foods and the first work that stored foods for longer storage periods (up to 10 days).