Food Processing Abstracts Collection

The Food Processing Abstracts were available on a subscription basis from Lowry-Cocroft Abstracts based in Evanston, Illinois. Each week subscribers received abstracts, alphabetized and numbered in order, coded by a classification system. The code numbers appeared on the lower right hand corner of each card. The classification system had three divisions: Processing Fields, Type of Food Processed, and Kind of Information Included.

Processing Fields subjects consisted of pasteurization, heat sterilization, freezing, dehyrofreezing, dehydration and concentration, freeze drying, preservation with chemicals (including salt), fermentations (excluding alcoholic beverages, separation and refining, irradiation, enzyme treatment, packing, packaging, cooking and baking, and organoleptic analysis.

Types of Food Processed subjects were vegetables, fruit and fruit products, meat, poultry, fish and shellfish, eggs, dairy products, cereals and soy beans, starch, sugar and confections, beverages, oils and fats, spices and flavorings, prepared foods, diet foods, other foods, and baked goods.

The differentiation by kind of information covered field included patent, legal, quality control, microbiology, time and temperature processing, equipment, storage, flavor, texture, color, nutritive value, antioxidants, emulsifiers and stabilizers, other additives, composition and analysis, and consumer preference.

Information was retrieved by use of a sorting needle. For instance, if it was desired to obtain all the articles on the subject of freeze drying, the needle was inserted in hold 23 and the desired cards, on which this number was notched, dropped out. If only the articles on freeze drying of meat products were desired, a second use of the needle in hole 49 of the separated cards isolated those. Again if it was desired to refer only to patents on freeze drying of meat, a third use of the needles in hold 29 segregated those.