1. Introduction

Food has a vital role in human's life. Increasing demand on food because of growing population of the world necessitates to change food production and consumption ways [1]. The idea of "sustainable development" or "sustainability" has become increasingly prominent across the globe, applied and discussed at the international and national level [2]. In this context,

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

resources need to be used effectively for both food production and food consumption. For that reason, food industry officials have to become conscious on sustainable green food production and are researching alternative food processing techniques. There is an increasing public awareness of health, environment, and safety hazards associated with the use of organic solvents in food processing. High cost of organic solvents and increasingly stringent environmental regulations have pointed out the need for development of new and clean technologies for food product processing [3]. At this point, the importance of new and environmentally friendly techniques and their multidisciplinary combinations becomes noticeable. Those alternative techniques have been focused to acquire energy from various sources while controlling the emission rate as well as applying the limits on food safety and control. Among them, being a green technology, microwave-assisted extraction (as a side branch of extraction) has been proposed in a new promising way to produce inevitable variety of food production [4].

health, safety, and environment and the demographic and ethnic structure of the societies, as well as the lifestyle and social development levels of the societies, are mutually connotations. However, taking environmental considerations into consideration, it is essential to take important steps in order to apply green production principles, go beyond awareness in the awareness

Microwave-Assisted Green Extraction Technology for Sustainable Food Processing

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According to the definition of the United Nations, sustainability is stated as "the ability of future generations to meet today's needs without jeopardizing their ability to meet their own needs" [6]. So, it can be defined and practiced in a way that today's social order will enable the living standards and business models to be used without damaging the possibilities of meeting the needs of future generations of resources that exist in nature. It is possible to classify the concept of sustainability as three-dimensional when going out from the definitions made. The factors that make up these dimensions can be grouped into three classes: social, economic, and

Sustainability in food, which is the starting point of the food industry, is possible with adequate systems and applications to produce adequate and high-quality agricultural products at reasonable costs and to continuously improve the protection of agricultural land, farmers, and the environment and natural farming resources. Good sustainable food production practices are systems developed for this purpose. The concept of "sustainability" has gained importance because of the ever-increasing world population and increasing new resource requirements, rising energy prices, and climate changes caused by greenhouse gases. Environmental, social, and economic indicators can be taken into account as indicators of sustainability in food production. It is generally known that sustainability has economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Sustainability in food is the system in which the social, economic, and environmental dimensions are taken into account in the process from the production to consumption of food. Processes such as the cooperation and cooperation of the civilian people or a group about food, forming their own structures, are defined as sustainable food systems [7]. These structures and processes include production, processing, distribution, wholesale and retail sales, consumption, and waste disposal. Sustainable food systems consist of producers' markets, producer-consumer cooperatives, community-supported agricultural systems, ecological markets, urban gardening, slow food systems, and food banks. The aims of sustainable food

of the situation, and make food production based on sustainable bases.

ecological. The common goal for all factors is to solve current global problems.

systems that have been developed in recent years in our country are defined as:

b. To support small family farming and ensure sustainable agricultural practices.

keting processes.

and agriculture-related enterprises.

f. To support local production, processing, and consumption.

a. To promote adequate, nutritious, and healthy food access for all community members.

c. To provide direct connection between consumers and producers in processing and mar-

d. To ensure the recycling of financial capital and to create business opportunities in food

e. To improve the working and living conditions of the workforce in the farm and food system.

Microwave-assisted green extraction technology is a new promising warranty of alternative investment channels for innovative applications and scale-up processes. The possibility of using microwave-assisted technologies has received an increasing attention to develop new technologies for the production of materials or to substitute traditional technologies based on the use of organic solvents. This multidisciplinary synergy will allow scientists to develop products of standardized concentration of active ingredients and will simultaneously produce nutraceutical and pharmaceutical products of much higher concentration and quality than possible by conventional chemical engineering unit operations, such as liquid/liquid extraction, distillation, mechanical micronization, liquid- and/or gas-phase reactions, etc.

In the context of this chapter, the importance of microwave-assisted green extraction technology focusing on food examples will be introduced. Besides, while practicing production techniques about food, some technical expressions such as raw material selection, energy efficiency, resource and waste management, product valorization, fractionation, and analysis methods will also be explained in the framework of emerging microwave technologies' concept. To conclude, within the scope of this chapter, how to produce different foodstuffs or raw materials not only by classical methods but also by cooperation with different innovative techniques of microwave technology will be explained with examples of various food samples while providing theoretical background on food processes.
