Food Preservation

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:

    Feed him ye must, whose food fills you.
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    Not sent ye for to drowne your paine,
    But for to make it spring againe.
    Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

    Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.
    Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)