Use of NMR and MRI to study water relations in foods

Water is the most important component of a food system, because it influences so many process variables, product characteristics, and stability attributes. Some of the most successful techniques used to probe the behavior of water in food systems are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and, more recently, pulsed-field gradient NMR and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The purpose of this chapter is to review the theory underlying these techniques and to present several examples of how they have been applied to study water relations in foods.