Water is ubiquitous in food systems. Its presence has a signifi cant infl uence upon the properties of the systems. To understand the roles of water, it is necessary to have some metric to defi ne the contribution from water. The challenge is to select the correct metric. The selection will depend upon the particular objective. The simplest metric is the gravimetric determination of actual water content. This is a necessary measure to allow for the description of system composition and is an important metric for many trade purposes. However, it provides little insight into the role of water. A metric of more relevance to the role of water is water activity, which describes the thermodynamic state of the water and can be correlated to the behavioral properties of many systems. However, this is an equilibrium measure and is of limited utility when attempting to understand many kinetic properties. For this, molecular mobilities, both of the water and of other system components, provide a clearer insight into system behavior. The issues inherent in the measurement of the infl uence of water are discussed from the aforementioned perspectives. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing.
CITATION STYLE
Reid, D. S. (2010). Taking the Measure of Water. In Water Properties in Food, Health, Pharmaceutical and Biological Systems: ISOPOW 10 (pp. 199–218). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470958193.ch16
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