Saving Money with Water Activity

Water is both one of the cheapest and most important ingredients in food products.  Overdrying or overbaking your product can be a double-wammy: the texture/flavor suffers, and you have less weight to sell to your customer. 

Why monitor moisture through water activity?  Because it gives you more control.  For most intermediate moisture foods, a small change in moisture yields a big change in water activity.  This means for some products (but certainly not all) you can set a higher water activity target, leaving more moisture in your product, simply because your measurement method is more precise.

The below calculator will show you how this works.  Choose a product from the first list.  Input your current moisture and water activity values.  If you don't know, just guess.  Then, using the key, select a higher water activity value that will still allow your product to meet quality specs.  Then, input the price of your product per unit weight, and how much of it you make in a month.  The calculator will tell you how much profit you can make by controlling moisture through water activity.