The meaning of food freshness

Many findings suggest that investigated consumers most frequently use freshness, taste, and appearance to evaluate food quality. The freshness of a product has a big impact on consumers’ perception of quality.

“Freshness” is the condition of being fresh or as close to harvest as possible. Freshness is a holistic attribute of a food product, with meaning that most often includes how recently produced or harvested a food currently is, to what extent it has been preserved, and it is the opposite of stale or spoiled

Freshness is also used to describe vegetables harvested at the point of maximum organoleptic quality characterized by the greatest turgidity, color, flavor and crispness.

Freshness is important in items like fruits, vegetables, and animal-derived proteins. And attributes such as color, sheen, blemish (or lack thereof), aroma, and firmness are the measures of freshness in produce. The description of freshness differs little between fruits and vegetables but varies greatly between consumers.

Fresh foods or ingredients also retain a lot more nutritious value compared to processed foods that have been adulterated, and in many cases, exposed to preservatives and other such chemicals.

In legislation, freshness was used as a criterion of quality (e.g. fresh eggs vs. rotten eggs), a condition of offer (e.g. fresh fish vs. frozen fish), a time factor (e.g. fresh bread vs. stale bread) or a product name (e.g. fresh cheese).

Maintaining freshness is the central idea in the packaging of fresh produce. Modified atmosphere packaging, active packaging, and edible coatings are the technologies available for preserving freshness and extending the shelf life.
The meaning of food freshness