Malcond Valladares, Ph.D., Food Scientist, Product and Process Development,
The National Food Lab, Inc.
Malcond Valladares is a Food Scientist at The National Food Lab. Malcond’s extensive product development expertise includes conducting microbial risk assessments for ingredients and finished products and exploring the use of emerging natural antimicrobials to extend the shelf life of various food platforms. Malcond is a professional member of IFT and the IAFP and has obtained his Ph.D. in Food Science, specializing in food microbiology, from the University of Tennesse. His doctoral research was focused on the thermal inactivation kinetics of microbial foodborne bacteria in food systems.
About The National Food Lab The National Food Lab is a premier food and consumer product development service provider for the international food, beverage, and nutritional supplement industries. The NFL integrates consumer guidance, culinary ideation and “protocepting,” and product and process development to maximize speed to market and success once there.
Global Food Forums Presentations by Speaker
Considerations for Selecting and Evaluating Clean-Label Antimicrobial Ingredients for Salad Dressings
Formulation of clean label salad dressings can be challenging. Besides the obvious food safety concerns from pathogenic microorganisms, there are additional hurdles resulting from the growth of spoilage microorganisms.
Clean label products were developed to address consumers’ demand for thoughtfully crafted products made with natural, easily recognizable ingredients. This demand limits the use of many typical solutions used by product developers to address product stability challenges.
This presentation will focus on aspects to be considered when developing non-thermally treated acidified salad dressings and on potential strategies of interest when formulating clean-label salad dressings. The discussion will specifically focus on the selection of potential natural antimicrobial ingredients and the evaluation of their antimicrobial performance in such food product applications.
Key learnings will include:
- Understanding the regulatory framework around salad dressing
- Potential antimicrobial ingredients used to overcome microbial contamination challenges in clean-label salad dressing application
- Current limitations of antimicrobial ingredients available in the market
- Microbial challenge studies for validation of antimicrobial efficacy
