Immaculate consumption

Juming Tang is developing a revolutionary method of processing foods that controls pathogens, extends shelf life and preserves their natural taste, texture and nutrition.

The distinguished food engineer Juming Tang is aware of the coincidence — and the irony — of sharing a name with one of the most engineered “foods” ever concocted.

Whereas Tang (the powdered orange juice substitute that early NASA astronauts took into space) was developed as the most artificial of edibles, Tang (the new Frank Jungers Endowed Chair of the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering) has developed a revolutionary way to process real food.

This new method harnesses a technology that you’ll find in almost every kitchen: the microwave.

Over decades of studies, Tang has demonstrated that applying a precise frequency of electromagnetic energy to a cornucopia of different packaged foods prevents contamination, extends shelf life and preserves organic taste, texture and nutrition.

Best of all, this FDA-approved method is conducive to commercial applications and industrial scale.

“By using an old technology in a new way, we can preserve food and control pathogens while producing ready-to-eat food that remains as close to its natural form as possible,” Tang says. “This is a unique opportunity to vastly improve the food supply through engineering.”

Becoming a food engineer

Tang grew up in southeastern China, the son of university professors. “I was a city boy,” he says. “I never thought about agriculture.”

That changed after high school when he and his classmates were dispatched to a remote village to spend three years farming rice and vegetables. “The experience was hard, but it helped me understand agriculture,” he says. “And I saw the need for advanced but viable technologies to harvest, process and preserve perishable produce.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in China, Tang pursued graduate studies in food engineering at the University of Guelph and earned a doctorate at the University of Saskatchewan, in Canada’s agricultural heartland. His research, initially focused on food dehydration, expanded into a broader quest to invent better methods of processing and preservation.

Microwave power

Humans have processed foods since the Stone Age. The more recent inventions of canning, pasteurization, freezing and refrigeration gave rise to the modern $10 trillion food industry.

But this industry consumes enormous amounts of energy and natural resources. And its products remain susceptible to harmful pathogens like Clostridium botulinum, Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria.

Tang resolved to innovate. While studying the U.S. military’s long-running MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) program at Washington State University (WSU) in the late 1990s, he began experimenting with the microwave — a technology first deployed to spot enemy ships during World War II — as an alternative means of thermal processing.

Unlike conventional heating, electromagnetic microwaves heat food volumetrically, which dramatically reduces the time and temperature required to eradicate pathogens.

“We were trying to achieve more uniform heating throughout the package,” Tang says.

At the frequency of 915 MHz, they did just that.

Like minds

To develop this application of microwave technology, Tang received support from the U.S. Departments of Defense and Agriculture and partnered with food producers and packagers ranging from the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Center to Kraft, Hormel, General Mills and PepsiCo. He also began an occasional partnership with NASA to improve the quality and safety of ready-to-eat meals for space exploration.

“Many organizations had tried and failed to develop their own microwave-based technologies,” he says. “So, we became an aggregator within the industry.”

At WSU, Tang led an industry consortium and a center of excellence that developed commercially viable microwave technologies to sterilize shelf-stable, refrigerated and frozen foods.

Prometheus, plus

Early ads for the Amana “Radarange” — the first domestic microwave oven — invited consumers to “make the greatest cooking discovery since fire.” Tang’s innovations may be the greatest processing discovery since fire.

In addition to sterilizing foods, his application of longer microwaves rather than conventional heat for processing expends less energy, extends longevity and preserves the sensory properties of appearance, texture, taste and smell.

Picture, for example, a polymer-packaged filet of firm, pink roasted salmon — a vast improvement over the mushy grey matter you’ll find in a conventional tin. Or a shelf-stable packet of jambalaya with bright colors and flavors that are not dulled by excessive preservatives or salt.

More recently, Tang’s lab has expanded research to understand why pathogen outbreaks have increased in dehydrated and low-moisture foods such as spices, grains, nuts, dried fruits, baby formula and baked goods. In addition to developing new industrial strategies to keep bacterial pathogens out of these foods, he has begun experimenting with radio frequency energy to control pests in agricultural commodities.

For his many contributions, Tang has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. And he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Engineering and Food.

But he is far from finished.

Toward a circular bioeconomy

Since joining the UW last year with appointments in the Departments of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Tang is addressing an even grander challenge: helping develop a “circular” bioeconomic system that makes food production and distribution more sustainable, resilient and environmentally friendly.

He envisions a global network of regional food processing hubs — cloud-based, AI-driven, microwave-assisted — that can deliver goods from farm to table more efficiently, safely and palatably.

To this new mission, Tang is applying mechanical engineering and food safety technologies to complex industrial systems and distribution chains. And he’s excited to do so in Seattle, a global center of tech and industry, and in collaboration with world-class colleagues from around the College of Engineering and many other disciplines at the UW.

“My vision is to decentralize food production with a platform that captures freshness while extending shelf life,” he says. “Then you bring value to consumers more directly from farmers, rather than across such a long distribution chain.

“That’s why we want to develop a smart processing machine that anybody can use. That’s my dream.”

Unlike most dreams, Tang’s come with deadlines. For this one? He’s giving it ten years.