Book excerpt: This reference examines the properties, conditions, and theoretical principles governing the safety and efficacy of various food preservation, storage, and packaging techniques. The book analyzes methods to predict and optimize the nutrition, texture, and quality of food compounds while reducing operating cost and waste. The Second Edition contains new chapters and discussions on non-thermal processes; the mechanisms of heat transfer, including conduction, convection, radiation, and dielectric and microwave heating; the kinetic parameters of food process operations; freezing technology, using illustrative examples; recent breakthroughs in cryochemistry and cryobiology, and more.