Foods and Beverages

Foods and Beverages - Man has always lost and continues to lose punitive quantities of food due to microbial activity. And, ironically, it is in the sector of foods and beverages that the microbes were first gainfully employed to produce unique and more useful products, e.g., bread, cheese, butter, curd, wines, etc., even before the existence of microbes was known. Later, pure cultures of microbes were isolated and improved for specific applications in processing of foods and beverages.

Still later, purified enzymes and immobilized cells began to be used. More recently, microbial biomass production has been developed into an industrial activity to obtain protein rich food/feed supplements.