For many years, food was not considered an important or even decent scientific
subject. “Food belongs in the kitchen!” Those days are over and for good
reasons. Food still belongs in the kitchen, but at the same time food science is
an extremely challenging, interesting and rewarding area of research.
Food is of a fundamental importance and covers complicated and crossdisciplinary
aspects ranging from e.g. sensory perception, culture, nutrition,
gastronomy, physics, chemistry and engineering.
l What is the impact of seasonal variations in the raw material?
l How will the long-term stability of cream cheese change when switching
to another breed of cows?
l How to evaluate the complex changes in aroma occurring over the course
of a fermentation?
l Is it possible to determine if an unknown toxic substance is present in a
curry sauce?
l In which way will shelf-life be affected if the ultrafiltration conditions are
modified?
l How can the Maillard reaction be controlled during cooking?
l Can we have more timely and more accurate characterization of whether
production is running smoothly?
The above questions are difficult to answer without comprehensive and relevant
information. Such information will almost invariably be multivariate in nature
in order to comprehensively describe the complex underlying problems. Therefore,
the need for advanced experimental planning and subsequent advanced
data analysis is obvious. Chemometrics provides the necessary tools for digging
into food-related problems. This book is a highly needed and relevant contribution
to the food research area in this respect. The book provides an impressive,
very detailed and illustrative tour de force through the chemometric landscape.
This book will prove useful to newcomers trying to understand the field of
chemometrics, for the food researcher wanting to more actively use chemometric
tools in practice and to teachers and students participating in chemometrics
courses.