SUAREZ:  ... We’re now joined by Dr. Phillip Nelson in Ames, Iowa, winner of the World Food Prize.  Professor Nelson, congratulations first off on your award and thank you for taking the time to be with us on World Food Day.  Let’s begin by explaining to people who are listening to this program at the various sites what your research has been focused on in food security. 

NELSON:  My focus has really taken place after the farm gate, as we say.  It’s to preserve what we’ve produced so it becomes available for us to use later on.  Many of our products that we do produce are lost due to spoilage and decomposition and it’s not available for human consumption.  So my thrust has been to try to develop technology and train people to use technology that will allow them to have an adequate food supply the year round. 

SUAREZ:  When you say a lot of food is lost, give us an idea how much.  Is it enough to make a real difference in the food security of the world’s hungriest people? 

NELSON:  You know, it really is.  Even in the U.S. we lose a lot of food but in the developing countries there have been examples of as high as 50 or 60% of fresh fruits that were produced that were lost before there was any chance of human consumption.  I just saw a report that in Afghanistan while in the province there is sufficient fruit but almost half of it will be lost because no method of preserving that food is available there right at the moment.

SUAREZ:  So what do you propose for societies like that that might otherwise be more food secure but are experiencing a lot of losses from harvest to plate?

NELSON:  Certainly in many of the countries where there is sufficient food, and that’s not all of the world, but in areas like India, China, and so forth, preservation methods now are being put in place to allow transfer of the product out to the remote areas of the country and in something like asceptic processing, which I’m involved in, this can be done without refrigeration.  Distribution of the product now is available, for example, milk in India can be preserved in asceptic containers without the requirement of refrigeration, so it’s a major development for those parts of the world that do not have this cold chain that we are able to use here in the U.S.

SUAREZ:  Help me to understand a little better how you would preserve something that is very perishable, short-term, like milk without refrigeration.  What do you do with it?

NELSON:  The technology that we use is called asceptic processing and if you think of home canning, we put everything into the container, we cover it, close it up, and then we heat it.  At that time that means we’ve destroyed the spoilage organisms of the food as well as the package at the same time.  With asceptic processing we do that outside of the container so that we can heat it much quicker.  We cool it down to ambient temperature.  The package can be something as inexpensive as a cardboard box.  We can sterilize it and then put the two together in a sterile environment.  It allows us to produce a product that is not only shelf stable but also higher quality in nutrition as well as sensory flavor and so forth.

SUAREZ:  Once you use milk again, it’s sometimes hard to tell that that kind of processing has been done on it.  What about with fruits and vegetables?  Don’t you take the risk of really changing the form of the fruit or vegetable in a way that makes it apparent that you’ve started to cook it?

NELSON:   You know the advantage again of this process is that we heat it quickly and cool it quickly so the flavor will be altered some.  Obviously for example fresh squeezed orange juice.  But the process does allow us to produce a product that is almost fresh-like and certainly high in its nutrient content, much higher than ever before.

SUAREZ:  Dr. Nelson, congratulations again and thanks for joining us.

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