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Convenience foods, produced by processes conceived by chemical engineers, allow us to eat well, even on the go. Photo by Becky Stein.

In an instant, heat and eat, just add water . . . and you’re on your way, fully fed. Our current fast-paced lifestyles have been supported by the development of a myriad of quick and tasty foods. Chemical engineers are largely responsible for first conceiving and then developing the many automated processes used to produce today’s easy-to-cook convenience foods.

Fast-cooking foods

Early efforts to produce fast-cooking rice, beans, and other legumes came with such nutritional tradeoffs as the removal of nutrient-rich outer bran layers. Chemical engineers developed imaginative food-processing techniques that allow highly nutritious brown rice, wild rice, beans and various crop seeds to be cooked quickly without sacrificing those outer layers.

Frozen foods

The initial challenge was to produce frozen foods that retain their appearance, texture, taste, and nutritional content when thawed and cooked. Chemical engineers discovered that quick-freezing processes helped thawed foods retain all their freshness. The blanching of vegetables followed by quick freezing suppresses the enzymes that cause discoloration and the development of bad flavors.

Individually quick frozen processing was developed in the 1960s. It involves flash freezing pieces of food, which allows them to retain their natural characteristics when thawed.