Shelf life testing is important for any business in the food manufacturing industry. Food shelf life testing helps companies understand how long their products will maintain an acceptable degree of quality after they are manufactured. This helps companies establish accurate expiration dates for their food products to ensure the best experience for their customers. In this post, we will help you discover the benefits of accelerated shelf life testing.
Accelerated expiry testing in the context of sports primarily pertains to assessing the shelf life and safety of perishable food items utilized by athletes during training and competitions. This process involves selecting food samples, subjecting them to various stress factors like temperature variations and humidity, and closely monitoring their condition. By compressing time and simulating the impact of these stress factors, the testing helps determine how long the food items remain safe and suitable for consumption. The data collected during these tests is instrumental in establishing expiry dates and ensuring that athletes are provided with safe and nutritious food products that meet quality and safety standards. This process is crucial to safeguarding the health and well-being of athletes and maintaining the integrity of the sports industry, also find out more about how Sidney Crosby named to Order of Canada.
Shelf Life Testing Benefits
Food shelf life testing also helps companies identify the types of degradation that are observed at the end of the product’s shelf life. This may include…
- Off-odors
- Off-flavors
- Loss of color
- Breakdown of texture
By understanding the types of degradation that occur at the end of the product’s shelf life, companies can determine the causes of that degradation and find solutions to correct them, ultimately improving the finished product.
Real-Time Simulation Tests May Take Too Long
The most accurate way to determine your product’s shelf life is to conduct real-time simulation tests. In this setup, the product is stored under its normal storage conditions and monitored until it degrades.
This testing method is very straightforward. However, it can be time-consuming for manufacturers, and there are many instances when decisions must be made within tight timelines.
Food manufacturers are also under constant pressure to develop and launch new products in shorter periods of time, so they often do not have enough time to complete a real-time shelf life test. This is where accelerated food shelf life testing, or ASLT, can help.
What Is Accelerated Shelf Life Testing (ASLT)?
Accelerated shelf life testing of food is an indirect method of determining a food product’s shelf life. The products that are most often subjected to ASLT are those with very long shelf lives, such as…
- Confectionery
- Dry powders
- Dry cereals
These and similar products will maintain quality for an extended period. Thus, to observe degradation within a reasonable period of time, the products must be subjected to the conditions of accelerated shelf life testing of food.
In ASLT, products are stored under elevated stress conditions to accelerate physiochemical changes and speed up their rate of degradation. Temperature is the most common acceleration factor used in these tests. Given the aggravated conditions, ASLT reduces the time needed to test products. This feature can shorten the time needed for food shelf life testing to half or even one quarter of the time needed under real-time shelf life testing.
5 Reasons To Do Accelerated Shelf Life Testing
Reducing the amount of time to complete shelf life testing is just one of the many advantages you can get out of conducting ASLT. Here are five more reasons why your food manufacturing facility should adopt this testing method:
1. Accelerates Shelf Life Prediction
The biggest reason to implement accelerated shelf life testing for your products is that it allows you to ascertain their expiration dates much earlier than in real-time tests.
ASLT is particularly helpful if you are keeping up with a tight launch schedule and need to make commercial decisions quickly. ASLT enables you to still get reliable expiration dates, have them printed on your product labels, and push through with your product launch timeline as planned. Going the real-time simulation route would greatly extend the amount of time needed to complete this process. Aside from this, ASLT also gives you crucial information on the quality of the product very early on, which is required in audits and inspections.
However, it is important to note that not all products are candidates for accelerated shelf life testing. This will be dependent on factors such as product pH, moisture content, and texture, and will be heavily influenced by the expected modes of product degradation. It is always important to consult with a shelf life testing expert to determine if your product is a candidate for ASLT. Our experts are glad to help; just contact us by completing the simple form at the bottom of this page.
2. Speeds Up Product Development
As mentioned earlier, the high-stress conditions used in accelerated shelf life testing speed up the deterioration of a product. This consequently reduces the time required for testing.
If you are developing a new product or formulation, this gives you the chance to gather more data in less time. ASLT enables you to eliminate the factors that are contributing to product degradation early on in the development process. Ultimately, this testing method helps you reduce the time and budget required to launch a successful product into the market.
3. Help Determine Product Quality Under Extreme Conditions
Accelerated shelf life testing is not only useful in determining a product’s lifespan. It is also instrumental in observing the changes a product undergoes when it is stored under higher stress conditions.
Since your products may not always be stored under your recommended conditions, ASLT gives you an idea of how the product will perform when its storage environment is less than ideal. This is particularly important for products that are destined for markets where temperature abuse is more likely due to warm climates and humid conditions.
4. Helps Improve Packaging and Storage Systems
Packaging and storage play a crucial role in your food product’s quality and rate of deterioration. Fortunately, the findings you get from accelerated shelf life testing can also give you guidance on how to improve both.
Remember, packaging material also degrades over time, just like your food product, and you want to ensure that your package always looks as presentable and wholesome as your product does. ASLT lets you know which storage conditions to achieve and avoid, enabling you to keep your products fresh for as long as possible.
5. Protects Your Business
Conducting an accelerated shelf life test helps you speed up lifespan prediction and product development, but that’s not all. ASLT also helps prevent you from launching low-quality products and dealing with customer complaints and product recalls due to quality issues. It also gives you insight into the causes of reduced shelf life, which you can use to improve your products and processes.
Ultimately, conducting an accelerated shelf life test can optimize your operations, provide quality products for your customers, and enhance your profitability.
FSNS Lab+ Can Design and Conduct Your Shelf Life Test
Understanding how to design and conduct a real-time shelf life test or an accelerated shelf life test for food can be daunting if you are unfamiliar with the process. The scientists at FSNS Lab+, the contract research division of Certified Group, can help. Our team can guide you through the process of conducting shelf life testing on your product, from designing the study to interpreting the final results.
If you are ready to get a quote on a shelf life study for your products, complete our Shelf Life Study Questionnaire and we will respond within one business day.
