Food quality, including colour, texture, flavour and nutritional value, is of key importance in the context of food preservation and processing. Colour, texture and flavour refer to consumption quality, purchase and product acceptability whereas the nutritive values (i.e. vitamin content, nutrients, minerals, healthrelated food components) refer to hidden quality aspects. In conventional thermal processing, process optimisation consists of reducing the severity of the thermal process in terms of food quality destruction without compromising food safety