History of the Food Structure Journal
1982-1993


Miloslav Kaláb
Former Editor-in-Chief of Food Structure


Introduction Established: 30/1/2013.
Updated: 12-03-2014.

    Almost twenty years have passed since Food Structure, a scientific journal established in 1982 by Scanning Electron Microscopy, Inc., ceased to exist at the end of 1993 with Vol. 12, No. 4, and a new Food Structure journal is being established in 2013 by Elsevier Publishers. The discontinued journal started to appear under the title Food Microstructure (ISSN 0730-5419) but its name was changed to Food Structure in 1990.

    As one of the founders and the former Editor-in-Chief of Food Structure in the 20-th century, I am very pleased that food scientists who specialize in structural studies, have received a new journal and I congratulate Dérick Rousseau (Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Editor-in-Chief, the Associate Editors, and the Editorial Board of the new journal and Elsevier Publishers on their successful joint effort to provide a forum for scientific papers dealing with food structure.

    My brief reminiscences may interest colleagues who are curious about the history of the discontinued Food Structure journal. It all started as an international co-operation in the 70-ties of the past century in Chicago.

    Systematic microscopic studies of foods started to expand with industrial manufacture of foods which answered the frequent question: "What shall I cook today?" To manufacture, on a large scale, foods of uniform high quality, it was necessary to characterize important properties both of the sources and the products. I was also necessary to learn about the effects which the changes in manufacturing parameters would have on the quality of the foods produced on a large scale. Such knowledge would also prevent costly mistakes which could be caused if processing temperatures, acidity, presence of ingredients or variations in their composition were allowed to fluctuate.

    Texture and structure are very important properties of foods. Even the best composition of a particular food full of important nutrients may not raise the desire of the consumers to eat it unless it feels good in the mouth or, in other words, has a desirable mouthfeel. These relationships are being studied in great detail. The tools to examine food structure have developed, basically, from light microscopy to a great variety of instruments, now including electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, magnetic resonance imaging and other techniques mentioned by Aguilera and Stanley [1].

    Dr. I. Heertje, a renowned food structure reseacher and the former European Editor of Food Structure has contributed the following reasons for food structure studies (Scheme 1 in Heertje I. 1998. Fat crystals, emulsifiers and liquid crystals. From structure to functionality. Polish J. Food Nutr. Sci. 7/48, 7-18 (S):

    "A proper understanding of the behaviour of food products requires knowledge of its structure, i.e. the spatial arrangement of the various structural elements, such as droplets, air-cells, crystals, strands and micelles. This structure, on the one hand, finds its origin in the molecular properties of the offered ingredients and on the other hand gives rise to the macroscopic behaviour- the function- of the final product. The central position of structure in the relation between molecular properties of ingredients and macroscopic behaviour is illustrated in the scheme shown below":

   
          INGREDIENTS
Molecular properties

Conformation
Denaturation
Molecular mass
Interaction
Crystal modification
Liquid crystallinity
Structure
→    


PRODUCT             
Macroscopic behaviour

Hardness
Gel strength
Spreadability
Mouthfeel
Emulsion stability
Water binding


    The results of structural studies have been published in many food science journals such as Carbohydrate Polymers, Cereal Chemistry, Colloid and Polymer Science, Fleischwirtschaft, Food Hydrocolloids, Food Technology, Journal of Cereal Science, International Dairy Journal, Journal of Dairy Research, Journal of Dairy Science, Journal of Food Science, Journal of Texture Studies, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, Journal of Ultrastructure Research, Lipids, LWT - Food Science and Technology, Meat Science, Milchwissenschaft, Starch/Stärke, etc.

Early Food Structure Research in Ottawa

    Until the late 60-ties, the author of this note (who initially graduated as a sugar manufacture engineer in 1952) was an associate professor of biochemistry in Czechoslovakia. He was keen to learn how science was done elsewhere and in 1966 he had the luck to be accepted as a post-doctorate fellow at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa to study low-density lipoproteins in pig blood serum. Under normal circumstances, he would return to his home university at the end of August 1968 to share his new experience with his students. However, because of the invasion of his home country, he decided to stay in Canada. He was lucky for the second time to find employment with the Food Research Institute (FRI) at the federal Department of Agriculture (now Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - AAFC) thanks to Dr. D.B. Emmons, one of the most accomplished dairy scientists on the global scale. About two weeks before his scheduled return home from from Canada, the author was curious to know, why Canadian cottage cheese was markedly different from cottage cheese made in Czechoslovakia. He was referred by his NRC colleagues to Dr. Emmons as the ultimate authority on cottage cheese, for the research of which he was awarded the Pfizer Award from the American Dairy Science Association.

    Dr. Emmons was pleased by the interest in cottage cheese by the Czechoslovakian post-doc (who was of about the same age) and even gave him his book on this subject and wished him a happy return home. Two weeks later, with Czechoslovakia in political turmoil, the author was looking for any job. Dr. Emmons persuaded his director of the FRI to hire Miloš for the dairy section. As an unexpected fresh immigrant to Canada, he was overwhelmed by gratitude, particularly because two weeks ago he demonstrated ignorance of dairy technology when he asked how Canadian cottage cheese was made.

    In the dairy section, the author had been assigned a project which in 1974 would result in the development of skimmilk-based wieners. In 1973, he was sent on a 3-week tour of European dairy laboratories in The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Britain but even the combined advice could not advance his project to produce a marketable new food. The project was a failure, since the milk-based heat-induced gels resembled cheese rather than a meat product and It was impossible to make them elastic and juicy. Author's colleague Harry Harwalkar in Ottawa suggested that the resident electron microscopist, Dr. G.H. Haggis at AAFC could examine both products and explain their structural differences. Unlike the meat wieners, which were seen to consist mostly of muscle fibres, fat particles and solidified gelatin gel, the milk-based gels had a uniform composition of minute globules - casein micelles. The author was impressed by the results, recognized how important they were in his experiments to imitate a traditional product using a completely different source – and decided to learn electron microscopy.

    There has been an electron microscopy laboratory (EML) at AAFC where scientists and technicians of different disciplines were trained by the staff members and then were doing their microscopic research by themselves. Several technicians (S. Itz, E. Bond, and Ms. E. Ford) kept the equipment in good working conditions and provided advice. The author became an avid student. A new FRI director, Dr. J. Holme, cancelled the bizzare milk wiener projects and fully supported new food structure studies.

    Author's experiments and manuscripts on heat-induced gelation of skimmilk were replaced with first papers on the microstructure of yogurt, cottage cheese, and cheeses, published in the Journal of Dairy Science and Milchwissenschaft. Not having any formal education in dairy science, the author combined his newly acquired ability to use almost any electron microscopic technique learned and backed by the EML staff with the knowledge of dairy technologists, whose number gradually expanded to include M. Carić, (process cheese, dried milk products, coagulation of milk), D.B. Emmons (cottage cheese, cheeses), R.J. Lowrie (curd granule and milled curd junctions in cheeses), H.W. Modler (cheese ingredients, cheese spread), A. Sargant (yogurt, cream cheese), A.Y. Tamime (yogurt, labneh, cheese ingredients) etc. to solve practical problems, some of which he summarized in his paper The Beauty of Milk at High Magnification [2]. Experiments aimed at theoretical aspects of food structure were co-authored by V.R. Harwalkar.

    Technical support was initially provided by Mr. G. Larose, and later also by particularly skillful ladies Ms. P. Allan-Wojtas, Ms. B. Phipps-Todd, and Ms. G. Larocque. EML chief technician Mr. A.-F. Yang continued to provide assistance and advice until his retirement in 2013, when the author stll operated an ESEM microscope as an honoratry research associate. The author wishes to acknowledge the professionality of all these assistants who greatly contributed to the productivity of his small research group.

Food Microstructure established

    The resulting scientific papers attracted the attention of food scientists associated with Scanning Microscopy International, Inc. (SEM, Inc.) in Chicago and the author was invited to make a presentation in that city in 1979. There he met the organizers of the annual international meeting, S.H. Cohen (Sci. & Adv. Tech. Lab., US Army Natick R&D, Natick, MA), Eugenia A. Davis (Dept. Food Sci. & Nutr., Univ. of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN), D.N. Holcomb (Kraft Inc., Glenview, IL) and Om Johari, a well-established publisher of hard-cover high-quality journal, Scanning Microscopy International. The meeting was successful and the group was determined to expand the food structure section. At the next meeting, the author suggested that a specialized journal be established and his idea was accepted. First, however, papers on food structure presented earlier at SEM, Inc. meetings were compiled by Dave Holcomb and Miloš Kaláb in the form of a book, Studies of Food Structure published in 1981 [2]. The scientific journal entitled "Food Microstructure" was established in 1982 with the author as the Editor-in-Chief.

    The first issue of Food Microstructure was published in 1982. There were four editors, managing editor, and an editorial board consisting of 17 members: W. Buchheim (Germany), R.J. Carroll (US), C.L. Davey (New Zealand), R.G. Fulcher (Canada), D.J. Gallant (France), H.D. Geissinger (Canada), A.M. Hermansson (Sweden), R. Moss (Australia), Y. Pomeranz (US) M.W. Rüegg (Switzerland), K. Saio (Japan), M.V. Taranto (US), M.A. Tung (Canada), E. Varriano-Marston (US), J.G. Vaughan (United Kingdom), and W.J. Wolf (US). The journal started with two issues published annualy and the cost to subscribers was $50.00 for US delivery and $55.00 elsewhere.

All contributions fell into one of the following categories:

  • Research papers - presentation of new unpublished findings.
  • Review papers - included an extended literature review and complete bibliography. Emphasis was placed on author's new unpublished findings and on an extended discussion putting the topic in a proper perspective.
  • Tutorial papers - contained an organized comprehensive review of all relevant published material as for a teaching lecture.
  • Technical tips - contributions no longer than 1000 words.
  • Letters to the Editor - commented on papers already published in Food Microstructure/Food Structure.

There was some unconventional approach to publishing the new journal:

  • The reviers' names were revealed to the authors and a minimum of 3 reviewers were asked for comments on each manuscript. Thus, sometimes even a greater number of reviewers was used, particularly if the manuscript covered several unrelated disciplines. The names of the reviewers in alphabetical order and their affiliations were listed at the end of each issue.

  • The authors had a duty to respond to reviewers' comments and/or questions in writing in a section called Discussion with the Reviewers at the end of each paper.

  • The authors had an option to have the manuscript prepared for publication by SEM, Inc. at cost or, using so-called model sheets, they were allowed to make the layout by themselves and, thus, save page charges. Some rules were in effect. For example, the font sizes were limited to 10 or 12 points and all micrographs had to show micrometer markers or their widths had to be expressed in micrometers (µm).

  • The requirement for publishing illustrations in colour had to be made before the submission of the manuscript and the author(-s) had to cover the additional cost.

  • Authors from underdeveloped countries or those with insufficient means were given a travel support of up to $500.00 to present their manuscript at the annual meetings. The support was stipulated by the acceptance of the presentaton for publication. There was a conflict of opinion on this subject between the Managing Editor, Om Johari, and the Editor-in-Chief, M. Kaláb. The latter argued that any discussion following the oral presentation was useless as the manuscript had already been in the final form approved for publication.

    Studies of food structure may sometimes have brought smiles. At the end of the 80-ties Moshe Rosenberg at the University of California in Davis conceived an interesting idea that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could probably be used to non-destructively examine the interior of large Swiss cheese loaves. It would make it possible to detect loaves in which the gas eyes did not develop properly and remove them from the ripening rooms to make space for better developing loaves. M. Rosenberg contacted a friend at the faculty of medicine and inquired about a possibility of having MRI done on some of his research specimens. "How will you bring them to our lab?" his friend asked. "In bags", Moshe replied. "Sorry, but we do not do corpses", his friend objected. Well, he did not object, when he saw that the bags contained large cheese loaves [3].

    In those years, Miloš Kaláb was keen to show his micrographs of yogurt and cheese in television. He started to persuade a female director of programming at a local TV station about the beauty of his images. "What are these?" she pointed to images of bacteria. "They are lactobacilli and streptococci – bacteria which make the yogurt", Miloš explained. He received a swift reaction: "Sir, take your pictures and get out of here right now. We would not show bacteria in yogurt and risk a court action by yogurt manufacturers if their sales went down because the consumers were scared by your pictures. Have a nice day!"

    In his quest for recognition of electron microscopy as an excellent tool to peek into the food on our plates, Miloš wrote a short article and submitted it with many black-and-white micrographs to a well known American popular science magazine. The response was not satisfying but was at least encouraging: "Our readers are accustomed to illustrations in colour so please resubmit your micrographs in colour". The era of doing water colouring using a brush was just ending, so Miloš acquired Adobe Photoshop software and started to learn it. More than six months later, he resubmitted his micrographs. This time he received the opinion of the editor-in-chief that foods are a tricky subject to write about, that people have idiosyncracies and so to play it safe, he had decided against writing about foods "in too great detail". And indeed not only that magazine but other media have shied away from revealing too much detail about food structure, although many customers now know about probiotic bacteria. In fact, people were reading about black holes in deep space or ocean bottom vents populated by tube worms, shrimps and bacteria but they did not know what happens in milk when it turns into cheese curd or yogurt or why wheat grains can be turned into such delicious foods as donuts and cakes. This can be observed with all food sources which start as plants or animals and end up of the shelves of food stores as well as delicatessen stores. The editor of the American popular science magazine was right – colour makes micrographs much more appealing to the general public [5] even when showing what is left of foods after their passage through the digestive tract [6].

    In the 90-ties, the author was faced with a technological problem concerning cheese on pizza. Pizzerias complained to cheese manufacturers that their cheeses produced dark blisters when used as pizza topping. At that time, there was a competition, who will produce a pizzas in the shortest time, so the pizzerias started to markedly increase the temperature in their ovens. In the opinion of the bakers, the oven temperature had nothing to do with the blisters and the blisters were the result of poor cheese quality. The author was asked to investigate. Experiments were started and the blisters were evaluated for colour and dimensions using a digital image analyzer. The results were never published but information about them leaked somehow and one day, the author received a call from the CBC radio that Mr. Peter Gzowski would like to interview him concerning the pizza problem. At the time of the interview (9:00 a.m.), the author was in the CBC studio in the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa and everyone who knew about it, including the AAFC Information Department, had their tape recorders ready.

    The author could have been happy that thousands of Canadians will be listening to a talk about food structure but he wondered why it was such a silly problem which led to the interview. He decided to stirr the discussion away from pizza and focus it on cheese and other dairy products. Wasn't it cheese which caused the problems on pizza? He watched the large clock in the studio carefully, knowing that the talk was to last exactly 15 minutes. He gave Mr. Gzowski enough time for several questions. "So, doctor, tell our audience, that do you see in cheese with your electron microscope", he asked. "We see the protein body of the cheese with fat in the form of globules more or less evenly distirbuted in the protein and at a higher magnification we also see lactic acid bacteria..." Mr. Gzowski interrupted: "Oh, no, I would not like to see bacteria in cheese, that's awkward!" "C'mon, Mr Gzowski, do you drink beer?" "No, I prefer wine, but dos it have to do with with your cheese?" "Well, many foods are made by microorganisms, bacteria in yogurt, cheese. pickles, and sauerkraut and whereas yeast ferment sugars and produce alcohol, in wine as in beer - what would you drink hadn't been there these microorganisms?" The time was running out, the red light went off and the technicians in the studio smiled.

    The laboratory at AAFC was roaring with laughter, congratulating the author for the sneaky way in which he gave a dairy food structure overview in ten minutes and ended the interview on a funny note.

    As for food science, there was no doubt that it was a good idea to have a scientific journal dedicated to this subject.

New name: Food Structure

    Computers already started to be used and they made writing manuscripts much easier. The author bought a portable typewriter for himself in Czechoslovakia at the time when he worked on his dissertation thesis in the early fifties. A portable typewriter was the second new item which he bough after his arrival in Canada in 1966, the first being a pair of ski. At the FRI, his director rejected his request for an old Underwood typerwriter advising him to work in the same way as his other colleagues, i.e., writing the manuscripts on paper in pencil and ask Muriel - the typist - to type them. So, this immigrant started to bring his personal portable typewriter to the laboratory. Once his director noticed the characteristic sound coming out from the laboratory and told the author indignantly that he should have hired him as a typist rather than a scientist. – Reminiscences of this situation returned to the author's mind when he was introduced to "his temporary office" of a visiting scientist at the National Food Research Institute in Tsukuba (Japan) in November 1989. On an empty desk there was a paper pad and a new sharpened pencil. "What is this for?" the visitor asked. "This is a paper pad and a pencil for you to take notes of your experiments". "Don't you use computers?" was the second question. "Of course, we do, but do you know how to use them?" "Would you be willing to loan me a lap top?" "Certainly". The author was happy to obtain one which he was allowed to bring to the Guest House and use it there after hours. It was so much easier to write a diary in addition to describing the experiments. There was an interesting situation that the author was 60 years old in June 1989 and had at least 5 years to work in Canada in order to qualify for retirement. In Japan, in contrast, all scientists had to retire at the age of 60 but wait for 5 years before they would start receiving their pensions. Most of them would have to live on their savings whereas the really good ones were able to earn money as consultants or in other jobs outside of the institute.

    When the first computer became available for the public, the author bought a portable Osborne I computer which had two 5.25" soft floppy disks and a 3"x3" monitor. Printing was done on a dot matrix printer. At that time the older author's son started his engineering studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. There was a computer terminal room to be shared by many students, so a modem was also bought and Paul with his younger brother Peter connected the Osborne directly to the university computer. Another Osborne computer was bought and then brought every day to the laboratory. Paul and Peter connected both computers to a much larger Zenith monitors and all three men were now computerized. Their father's director and deputy director did not like the idea. What a nonsense it was that scientist Kaláb would type, with his own fingers, his scientific manuscripts – the introduction, some experimental procedures only to be used later, bibliographies to be also completed later. Not even typing that information on paper? It was disgusting and it smacked of cheating as his deputy director told him.

    A request for an IBM computer with two 3.5" floppy disks was rejected with the words that only managerial secretaries were allowed to use Wang word processors. At that time, scientist Kaláb requested a "digital image controller" for his manual digital image analyzer MOP-3. An Atlantis Computers company in Ottawa then delivered a unique controller which replaced all manual calculations of the numbers and dimensions of fat globules in processed cheese. It consisted of a floppy disk and an IBM PC. Its new owner was happy but did not brag about it, in order to be on the safer side. Yet his colleague, microscopist Suk H. Yiu, was inspired. She asked for and received "a microscope controller" - another IBM PC. Her papers on fluorescence and electron microscopy of rapeseed, mustard, cereals, and cheese may be found in Food Microstructure and Food Structure, Thus, Miloš and Suk were two black sheep in the Research Branch, too impatient to wait for an encouragement from the bureaucrats to use new office technology in their research.

    The computer markedly facilitated the organization of international meetings in various USA states although there was still neither e-mail nor the Internet. Contact with authors was still mostly by regular air mail or, if urgent, by telex. In order to invite as many food microscopists as possible, the editors provided even advice on experimental methods. Freeze fracturing was considered to be superior to dry fracturing. There was a scientist in Europe, who submitted a manuscript on the microstructure of a sausage studied by SEM. The micrographs looked as if a "plaster" distortion has been applied in Adobe Photoshop. All structures appeared as if covered with water. He explained that he cut the sausage into 25 mm cubes (!) and immersed them in liquid nitrogen. In the meantime he established a height exactly 100 cm above a metal plate. From that height, he dropped the individual frozen cubes onto the metal plates whereby the cubes shattered. So he selected the best looking fragments and placed them in an aqueous fixative, then dehydrated them, critical-point dried them, mounted them, sputter-coated them with gold, examined them by SEM and - heureka - here he had the micrographs of the sausage microstructure. Then, and only then, the Editor-in-Chief gave a completely irrational advice saying, that similar results could have been obtained if the frozen sausage cubes had been placed on a door jamb and the door had been slammed, also doing some kind of "freeze-fracturing". Needless to say that this microscopist never contributed another manuscript and the one submitted could not be accepted for publication even if it were accompanied with a 5-page Discussion with Reviewers.

    Some requests for advice were difficult to answer, for example, "What would be the best electron microscopy technique to show the microstructure of a drink consisting of water, mixed fruit pulp, sugar, pectin, olive oil, bacteria, and yeast cells? – On many occasions it has been quite difficult to explain that liquid nitrogen is not as excellent a freezing agent because it is at its boiling point. Ice crystals which develop in hydrated foods by slow freezing indeed ruin the microstructure so that it is useless to publish the micrographs. It was also difficult to explain that there were no protocols to follow for individual food products. Hard process cheeses, cottage cheese, and yogurt are all dairy products but their 1 mm3 cubes require quite different times for full fixation and dehydration. There are considerable differences between the original biological tissue, such as skeletal muscle, and some foods made from them, such as ham or a dry salami. In fact, many other original food sources such as cereal grains, potatoes, soybeans, rapeseed, milk etc. may not be recognized in bakery products, potato chips, tofu, vegetable oil, or ice cream, respectively, to name a few. In the early years of food structure studies, there was an excellent advice: If you do microscopy of a food product for the first time, use several different techniques such as light microscopy, conventional SEM, cryo-SEM, TEM (thin-sectioning, negative staining, freeze-fracturing), etc.

    Helping other food microscopists, D.N. Holcomb compiled a paper entitled "Food Microstructure - Cummulative Index" and published it in Food Structure 9(2) 155-173 (1990). There he listed alphabetically all papers (243 entries) published before the journal name change to Food Structure. He has characterized all papers using abbreviations LFRA (Leatherhead Food Res. Assoc.), LM, SEM. TEM, XRD (X-ray diffraction), NMR, and ESR (electron spin resonance). In the following year, he published "Structure and rheology of dairy products: A compilation of references with subject and author indexes". Food Structure 10(1) 45-108 (1991). The compilation of 63 pages has 882 entries in alphabetical order of the first authors followed by full paper titles, journal references, and keywords. The author index lists 876 names and the subject indexes has 451 subjects.

Year Research Reviews Techniques Dairy Meat Cereals Legumes Other
1982 12   8   3   4   3   5   1   4  
1983 14   5   1   3   7   4   1   3  
1984 18   5   4   2   6   4   3   4  
1985 28   8   3   11   4   5   3   10  
1986 29   5   4   5   11   9   2   3  
1987 22   2   1   6   2   2   2   11  
1988 20   4   4   6   4   0   0   10  
1989 25   4   1   8   5   8   3   4  
1990 23   11   2   5   5   3   5   14  
1991 29   3   3   8   6   4   5   6  
1992 30   6   3   8   4   5   2   14  
1993 29   15   2   13   4   4   5   16  
Total 279   76   31   79   61   53   32   94  

Table 1. The number of papers (separately research papers and reviews, tutorials, and keynote papers) published annually by the subject of study such as the techniques to study food structure, milk and dairy products, meat and seafoods, cereals including bakery products, legumes and their products, and other subjects such as other plants, lipids, emulsions etc.
1982-1989: Food Microstructure — 1990-1993: Food Structure.




 
 
 
 

Figure 1. The numbers of research (dark gray) and review, tutorial, and keynote papers (light gray) published annually in Food Microstucture (1982-1989) and Food Structure (1990-1993).


Food Structure ends abruptly

Figure 2. The cover of the last Food Structure issue (Vol. 12, No. 4) published in 1993.
    At the suggestion of Editor I. Heertje, the title of Food Micro­structure was changed to Food Structure in 1990 to make it more appealing to a greater number of food scientists. At the same time, the cover page was modernized and the frequency of publication was doubled to 4 issues annually. The subscription rate was increased to $80.00 for USA delivery) and $95.00 elsewhere. The number of editors was increased by adding I. Heertje (The Netherlands), K. Sato (Japan), and W.J. Wolf (USA). Also the Editorial Board had new members, such as B.E. Brooker (UK), M. Carić (Yugoslavia), R.G. Cassens (USA), V.E. Colombo (Switz­erland), J.M. deMan (Canada), J.M. Faubion (USA), E. Kovacs (Hungary), C.M. Lee (USA), D.F. Lewis (UK), P. Resmini (Italy), R.G. Swanson (USA), P.D. Velinov (Bulgaria), and S.H. Yiu (Canada).

    In 1993 (Vol. 12), Food Structure published No. 4 as the last issue (Figure 2). At that time the annual subscription rate was $100 ($120), the number of editors was reduced to five (M. Kaláb as Editor-in-Chief, and S. Cohen, I. Heertje. D. Holcomb, and W. Wolf as members). Whereas some Editorial Board members had left, there were new microscopists appointed: D.E. Akin (USA), S. Barbut (Canada), D.B. Bechtel (USA), J.E. Charbonneau (USA), N. Garti (Israel), Á. Keresztes, and M. Rosenberg (USA).

    In the fall of 1993, the Editor-in-Chief was at the Utah State University as a visiting scientist - a guest of Dr. J.D. McMahon in Logan, UT. The relationship with Managing Editor of Food Structure gradually deteriorated to such an extent that he resigned from his position. Then, one day, Managing Editor Om Johari stopped taking telephones calls and responding to regular mail, faxes and telexes. There was no e-mail at that time. This regrettable situation was preceded by laying off the only employee, Mr. Joe Stachke, who had been replaced with a computer.

    In spite of his resignation, the Editor-in-Chief felt responsibility to Food Structure authors. It was him who solicited them for their contributions. In this situation, he regretted that there were no legally binding agreements which would define the rights and duties of the individual bodies which participated in the publication of the Food Structure journal, i.e., the publisher, the managing editor, the editor-in-chief, the editors, and the editorial board. The journal started with enthusiasm to establish a forum where scientists all over the world would have equal opportunities to publish their studies at a very high quality ensured by a rigorous reviewing system and the publisher's skills and ability to produce a high-quality jurnal on glossy paper at a low cost.

    The Editor-in-Chief used to fly to Chicago and to stay at the Publisher's home (which housed the operations with the exception of printing) for two days and nights four times a year just before the issues were to be printed. He would work from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m., at which time the Publisher and Managing Editor in one person would bring all manuscripts on model sheets to the printers. The galley proofs were printed at night and when the Editor-in-Chief came to the office in the basement at 7 a.m. the following morning, the galley proofs were already there for him to check and correct. No wonder that his colleagues, Associate Editors, called the journal "his baby".

    With the failure in the communications between the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher, the former received legal advice that a publisher has a duty to inform the authors whether and when their contributions will be published. He thus requested a response from the publisher concerning the fate of the manuscripts. Since no such response arrived within the specified time limit, he made an agreement with M. W. Rüegg, Editor-in-Chief of Lebensmittel-Wissenschaft und-Technologie/Food Science and Technology (lwt) published by Academic Press which ensured that all manuscripts which had already been reviewed and prepared for publication, had been promptly published in lwt. At that time, M. Kaláb had been co-opted to the lwt Editorial Board.

    The demise of Food Structure was never fully explained. the number of manuscripts was increasing (Table 1 and Figure 1) and so was the number of participants of the annual international meetings. Nowadays, the Publisher and Managing Editor of the journal, Dr. Johari, is a retired scientist after 35 years of work in the field of publishing books and journals on electron microscopy and organizing annual international meetings on various subjects. He was the owner and operators of Scanning Microscopy International in Chicago (AMF O'Hare). Now he shares programs related to meditation, laughter, gratitude, and Sudoku at many local senior centers.

    A discussion with some Associate Editors convinced the author that it was not feasible to start a new food structure journal although he already held some discussion with a small Canadian publisher of scientific journals. There was no question that it would not be possible to find a replacement for Dr. Johari, for whom his Scanning Electron Microscopy, Inc. was also an obsession. In 1994, the Editor-in-Chief was 65 years old and thus he faced retirement from his work at AAFC. The FRI had long ago been changed into CFAR (Centre for Food and Animal Research) and now AAFC decided to close it. Wolfgang Buchheim (Kiel, Germany) summarized the situation very clearly: "The times have changed and the production of a food structure journal at the high quality and a low cost by the scientists alone would not be possible at any other publisher".

    The group of food microscopists elected Ms. P. Allan-Wojtas their chairperson, accepted the name of Food Structure and Functionality and after some talks with "SCANNING, Inc." joined the American Oil Chemists Association.

    M. Kaláb started learning the HTML language and established his website dedicated to food structure studies. He compiled the Tables of Contents for all papers on food structure published by SEM, Inc. from 1979 to the end of 1993 at www.magma.ca/~scimat/journal2.htm and also at www.magma.ca/~pavel/science/journal2.htm. To make the tables available to future readers, Dr. H.D. Goff (University of Guelph, Canada) has placed a copy of the Tables of Contents on the university server (http://www.uoguelph.ca/foodscience/dairy-science-and-technology/structure-milk-and-dairy-products/food- structure-journal-tables-content).

It is exciting, therefore, to report once more
that a new Food Structure journal is being established
after a 20 years long absence of a specialized forum.
Comments on these reminiscences are welcome by the author.

References:
  1. Aguilera, J.M., Stanley, D.W. (1999) Microstructural Principles of Food Processing and Engineering. Aspen Publishers, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD, 432 pp.
  2. Holcomb, D.N., Kaláb, M. (1981) Studies of Food Structure. 342 pp. Scanning Electron Microscopy, Inc., AMF O'Hare, IL 60666.
  3. Rosenberg, M., McCarthy, M.J., Kauten, R. (1991) Magnetic resonance imaging of cheese structure. Food Structure 10(3) 185-192.
  4. Tamime, A.Y., Kaláb, M., Davies, G. (1984) Microstructure of set-style yogurt manufactured from cow's milk fortified by vaious methods. Food Microstructure 3(1) 83-92.
  5. Kaláb, M. (2010) The Beauty of Milk at High Magnification. infocus – Proceedings of the Royal Microscopical Society, Issue 18, 4-37.
  6. Kaláb, M. (2011) Microscopy and Hygiene. infocus – Proceedings of the Royal Microscopical Society, Issue 23, 4-32.
  7. Vaughan, J.G. (ed.) Food Microscopy, Academic Press, N.Y......
  8. Olga Flint, Food Microscopy: a manual of practical methods, using optical microscopy. BIOS Scientific Publishers Limited, 1994, 125 pp.

Links to the Internet:
  1. Food Structure 1979-1993 Table of Contents by M. Kaláb.
  2. Food Structure 1979-1993 Table of Contents by H. D. Goff.
  3. The Beauty of Milk at High Magnification http://www.rms.org.uk/Resources/Royal%20Microscopical%20Society/infocus/Images/TheBeautyOfMilk.pdf
  4. Microscopy and Hygiene. http://www.rms.org.uk/Resources/Royal%20Microscopical%20Society/infocus/Miloslav%20Kalab.pdf


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