Food processing describes those methods and processes used to transform raw ingredients into food for consumption for humans. Similar process are used to produce animal food. Foor processing takes clean, havested or slaughtered and butchered components and uses these to produce attractive and marketable food products.

The range of processing techniques include:

• removal of unwanted outer layers (Potato peeling, skinning of Peaches etc.)
• Chopping or slicing - (chips, diced carrot, candied peel etc)
• Mincing and macerating (minced meat, minced chestnut etc.).
• Liquefaction - (fruit juice etc.)
• Emulsifying (mayonnaise, ice cream , low fat margarine etc.)
• Cooking (boiling, frying, steaming, grilling etc.)
• Mixing (cake mixes, soup mixes etc.)
• Addition of gas - (air entrainment for bread, gasification of soft drinks etc.)
• Proving - (for yeast based products to develop taste and volume )

See also

• food preservation
• Food storage