Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or slow down Food spoilage, loss of quality, edibility or nutritional value and thus allow for longer food storage.
Preservation usually involves preventing the growth of bacteria, fungi (such as yeasts), and other micro-organisms (although some methods work by introducing benign bacteria, or fungi to the food), as well as retarding the oxidation of fats which cause rancidity. Food preservation can also include processes which inhibit visual deterioration, such as the enzymatic browning reaction in apples after they are cut, which can occur during food preparation.
Many processes designed to preserve food will involve a number of food preservation methods. Preserving fruit by turning it into jam, for example, involves boiling (to reduce the fruit’s moisture content and to kill bacteria, yeasts, etc.), sugaring (to prevent their re-growth) and sealing within an airtight jar (to prevent recontamination). There are many traditional methods of preserving food that limit the energy inputs and reduce carbon footprint.
Maintaining or creating nutritional value, texture and flavour is an important aspect of food preservation, although, historically, some methods drastically altered the character of the food being preserved. In many cases these changes have now come to be seen as desirable qualities – cheese, yoghurt and pickled onions being common examples.
Read more about Food Preservation: Drying, Refrigeration, Freezing, Vacuum Packing, Salt, Sugar, Smoking, Artificial Food Additives, Pickling, Lye, Canning and Bottling, Jellying, Jugging, Irradiation, Pulsed Electric Field Processing, Modified Atmosphere, High Pressure Food Preservation, Burial in The Ground, Controlled Use of Micro-organism, Biopreservation, Hurdle Technology
Famous quotes containing the words food and/or preservation:
“Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateurs work.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (18601935)
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (16321704)