Open Access

Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment consists of exposing food to electrical fields between electrodes within a treatment chamber, which can improve the preservation of fresh-like products such as milk. Although several studies support the use of PEF technology to process milk at low temperature, these studies reported microbial reductions of around 3 log10 cycles and also indicated a limited impact of PEF on some endogenous and microbial enzymes. This scenario indicates that increasing the impact of PEF on both enzymes and microorganisms remains a major challenge for this technology in milk processing. More recently, combining PEF with mild heating (below pasteurization condition) has been explored as an alternative processing technology to enhance the safety and to preserve the quality of fresh milk and milk products. Mild heating with PEF enhanced the safety of milk and derived products (3 log10–6 log10 cycles reduction on microbial load and drastic impact on the activity enzymes related to quality decay). Moreover, with this approach, there was minimal impact on enzymes of technological and safety relevance, proteins, milk fat globules, and nutrients (particularly for vitamins) and improvements in the shelf-life of milk and selected derived products were obtained. Finally, further experiments should consider the use of milk processed by PEF with mild heating on cheese-making. The combined approach of PEF with mild heating to process milk and derived products is very promising. The characteristics of current PEF systems (which is being used at an industrial level in several countries) and their use in the liquid food industry, particularly for milk and some milk products, could advance towards this strategy.

The development of healthier lifestyles is of great importance in modern societies. Due to the increasingly sedentarism of population, our current diets need to be adapted to reduce the consumption of salt, fats, and sugar to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases, among others. For example, salt consumption is increasing considerably worldwide, which has been accompanied by the increased rates of heart disease incidence, mainly in developed countries. The food industry is making considerable efforts to provide lower salt food with similar taste, texture, and shelf-life as conventional food to promote not only healthier consumption practices, but also to answer the raising awareness of consumers for better and healthier products. Replacing food ingredients with natural extracts, spices, algae, or halophyte plants is one of the strategies being employed in order to reduce salt consumption and its addition in foods. The main strategies used to reduce salt consumption rely of alternative salts such as potassium chloride, the use spices or, more recently, encapsulated salts that increase the salty taste at lower salt concentrations. Other possible replacers of salt have been investigated, and one of the most interesting approaches is the use of the halophyte plant glasswort (Salicornia ramosissima) that grows in saline environments. Other strategies to replace salt and sodium-based additives as food preservants rely on the use of nonthermal emergent processing technologies for microbial inactivation, such as high-pressure processing, pulsed electric field, and ultrasound, which have been used to reduce the amounts of salt in meat products without compromising food quality and safety. This chapter focus on the main strategies being employed to reduce salt consumption and the main replacers being used, as well as discussing health implications and recommendations by the official authorities for a healthier diet.