*3.4. Procedures*

This section presents some examples of complementary inventions (devices and protocols) in work-up procedures of cook–chill processes.

One of these is a device for distributing cooled food, for large kitchens, comprising a belt conveyor, several mobile feed distributor devices and a refrigerator circuit closed with a refrigeration system. The cooling capacity of the system can be divided into several cooling points which are arranged in the longitudinal direction of the belt conveyor and have means for connecting a feed distributor apparatus [50]. A computer program for managemen<sup>t</sup> of out-of-hospital cooking service that can on-line receive meal orders from a plurality hospital is described in a patent work [51]. This system can efficiently send information to large scale kitchens that cook and deliver daily meal to each patient that is registered on a master file containing nutritional and eat data according to medical prescriptions.

In addition, small companies such as restaurants can follow industrial protocol for preparing pre-cooked food [52] dividing the process in sequential steps: food cooking, portioning and packaging, removing oxygen by vacuum pump, pasteurization or sterilization and blast-chilling of the packages.

### **4. The Shelf-Life of Foods**
