pH scale showing different foods and household items.
In this week’s blog post, I discussed fruit and vegetable safety. In particular, I was concerned about measuring the pH and acidity of the products you were making from fruit and vegetables. When writing, I was reminded of my HARM series of posts as the “A” in HARM stands for acidity and you can read about that here. The important thing to remember, as you can see on the pH scale above, is that as pH and acidity have an inverse relationship which means that as acidity increases, pH falls.
As food product developers it is helpful to know that bacteria and other microorganisms prefer a neutral pH and a milder acidity. Food scientists balance the acidity and sweetness of a fruit based food product. Adding sugar reduces the perceived sourness caused by acidity while not changing the pH. This means that if you want to be sure that your fruit and vegetable juice is safe and tasty, you can add sugar and acid.
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