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Because food is so important to survival, food preservation is one of the oldest technologies used
by human beings. We¶ll look at all of the different preservation techniques commonly used
today, including:

!Ê 3efrigeration and freezing

!Ê aanning
!Ê xrradiation
!Ê ehydration
!Ê reeze-drying
!Ê ½alting
!Ê Yickling
!Ê Yasteurizing
!Ê ermentation
!Ê aarbonation
!Ê aheese-making
!Ê ahemical preservation

The basic idea behind all forms of food preservation is either:

!Ê To slow down the activity of disease-causing bacteria

!Ê To kill the bacteria altogether

xn certain cases, a preservation technique may also destroy enzymes naturally found in a food
that cause it to spoil or discolor quickly. An enzyme is a special protein that acts as a catalyst for
a chemical reaction, and enzymes are fairly fragile. By increasing the temperature of food to
about 150 degrees ahrenheit (66 degrees aelsius), enzymes are destroyed.

A food that is  contains no bacteria. Unless sterilized and sealed, all food contains bacteria.
or example, bacteria naturally living in milk will spoil the milk in two or three hours if the milk
is left out on the kitchen counter at room temperature. By putting the milk in the refrigerator you
don't eliminate the bacteria already there, but you do slow down the bacteria enough that the
milk will stay fresh for a week or two.

Let's look at all of the different forms of food preservation in detail.


 
 

3efrigeration and freezing are probably the most popular forms of food preservation in use
today. xn the case of refrigeration, the idea is to 



 to a crawl so that it takes
food much longer (perhaps a week or two, rather than half a day) to spoil. xn the case of freezing,
the idea is to   


 altogether. rozen bacteria are completely inactive.
3efrigeration and freezing are used on almost all foods: meats, fruits, vegetables, beverages, etc.
xn general, refrigeration has no effect on a food's taste or texture. reezing has no effect on the
taste or texture of most meats, has minimal effects on vegetables, but often completely changes
fruits (which become mushy). 3efrigeration's minimal effects account for its wide popularity.

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½ince 1825 or so, canning has provided a way for people to store foods for extremely long
periods of time. xn canning, you   the food in the can to kill all the bacteria and seal the can
(either before or while the food is boiling) to prevent any new bacteria from getting in. ½ince the
food in the can is completely sterile, it does not spoil. Once you open the can, bacteria enter and
begin attacking the food, so you have to "refrigerate the contents after opening" (you see that
label on all sorts of food products -- it means that the contents are sterile until you open the
container).

We generally think of "cans" as being metal, but any 


  
  can serve as a can.
Glass jars, for example, can be boiled and sealed. ½o can foil or plastic pouches and boxes. Milk
in a box that you can store on the shelf is "canned" milk. The milk inside the box is made sterile
(using 

c

 ) and sealed inside the box, so it does not
spoil even at room temperature.

One problem with canning, and the reason why refrigeration or freezing is preferred to canning,
is that the act of boiling food in the can generally changes its taste and texture (as well as its
nutritional content).

 
  

Many foods are dehydrated to preserve them. xf you walk through any grocery store you may
notice the following dehydrated products:

!Ê Yowdered milk
!Ê ehydrated potatoes in a box
!Ê ried fruits and vegetables
!Ê ried meats (like beef jerky)
!Ê Yowdered soups and sauces
!Ê Yasta
!Ê xnstant rice

½ince most bacteria die or become completely inactive when dried, dried foods kept in air-tight
containers can last quite a long time.

Normally, drying completely alters the taste and texture of the food, but in many cases a
completely new food is created that people like just as much as the original!

!  
reeze-drying is a special form of drying that removes all moisture and tends to have less of an
effect on a food's taste than normal dehydration does.

xn freeze-drying, food is   and placed in a strong

. The water in the food then

 -- that is, it turns straight from ice into vapor. reeze-drying is most commonly used
to make instant coffee, but also works extremely well on fruits such as apples.

" #$  !  

You probably don't have a good vacuum chamber at home, but you almost certainly have a
refrigerator. xf you don't mind waiting a week, you can experiment with freeze-drying at home
using your freezer.

or this experiment you will need a tray, preferably one that is  
. xf you have
something like a cake-cooling rack or a metal mesh tray that is perfect. You can use a cookie
sheet or a plate if that is all that you have, but the experiment will take longer.

Now you will need something to freeze-dry. Three good candidates are apples, potatoes and
carrots (apples have the advantage that they taste okay in their freeze-dried state). With a knife,
cut your apple, potato and/or carrot as thin as you can (try all three if you have them). aut them
paper-thin if you can do it -- the thinner you cut, the less time the experiment will take. Then
arrange your slices on your rack or tray and put them in the freezer. You want to do this fairly
quickly or else your potato and/or apple slices will discolor.

xn half an hour, look in on your experiment. The slices should be frozen solid.

Over the next week, look in on your slices. What will happen is that the water in the slices will
sublimate away. That is, the water in the slices will convert straight from solid water to water
vapor, never going through the liquid state (this is the same thing that mothballs do, going
straight from a solid to a gaseous state). After a week or so (depending on how cold your freezer
is and how thick the slices are), your slices will be completely dry. To test apple or potato slices
for complete drying, take one slice out and let it thaw. xt will turn black almost immediately if it
is not completely dry.

When all of the slices are completely dry, what you have is freeze-dried apples, potatoes and
carrots. You can "reconstitute" them by putting the slices in a cup or bowl and adding a little
boiling water (or add cold water and microwave). You can eat the apples in their dried state or
you can reconstitute them. What you will notice is that the reconstituted vegetables look and
taste pretty much like the original! That is why freeze-drying is a popular preservation technique.

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 , especially of meat, is an ancient preservation technique. The salt draws out moisture and
creates an environment inhospitable to bacteria. xf salted in cold weather (so that the meat does
not spoil while the salt has time to take effect), salted meat can last for years.
The following passage from John ½teinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" describes the process
briefly:

Noah carried the slabs of meat into the kitchen and cut it into small salting blocks, and
Ma patted the course salt in, laid it piece by piece in the kegs, careful that no two pieces
touched each other. ½he laid the slabs like bricks, and pounded salt in the spaces.

This technique creates a keg (a wooden barrel) full of salt and meat. This technique is ancient.
You can read about its use during the sailing voyages around the time of aolumbus. Many
accounts of the 3evolutionary War and especially the aivil War talk about meat preserved in this
way. ½alting was used to preserve meat up through the middle of this century, and was
eventually replaced by refrigeration and freezing.

Today, salting is still used to create salt-cured "country ham" found widely in the southern
United ½tates, dried beef (which you can buy in jars at most grocery stores), and corned beef and
pastrami, which are made by soaking beef in a 10-percent salt water brine for several weeks.

  was widely used to preserve meats, fruits and vegetables in the past, but today is used
almost exclusively to produce "pickles," or pickled cucumbers. Yickling uses the preservative
qualities of 
 (see above) combined with the preservative qualities of
, such as acetic acid
(vinegar). Acid environments inhibit bacteria. To make pickles, cucumbers are soaked in 10-
percent salt water brine for several days, then rinsed and stored in vinegar to preserve them for
years.


 &  &a

 


 

Yasteurization is a compromise. xf you boil a food you can kill all bacteria and make the food
sterile, but you often significantly affect the taste and nutritional value of the food. When you
pasteurize a food (almost always a liquid), what you are doing is heating it to a high enough
temperature to kill certain (but not all) bacteria and to disable certain enzymes, and in return you
are minimizing the effects on taste as much as you can. aommonly pasteurized foods include
milk, ice cream, fruit juices, beer and non-carbonated beverages. Milk, for example, can be
pasteurized by heating to 145 degrees  (62.8 degrees a) for half an hour or 163 degrees  (72.8
degrees a) for 15 seconds.



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 completely sterilizes the product. xt is used to
created "boxes of milk" that you see on the shelf at the grocery store. xn UHT pasteurization, the
temperature of the milk is raised to about 285 degrees  (141 degrees a) for one or two seconds,
sterilizing the milk.

  
ermentation uses 
 to produce
  . Alcohol is a good preservative because it kills
bacteria. When you ferment grape juice you create wine, which will last quite a long time
(decades if necessary) without refrigeration. Normal grape juice would mold in days.

a

 

aarbonated water is water in which 

  $
 has been dissolved under pressure. By
eliminating oxygen, carbonated water inhibits bacterial growth. aarbonated beverages (soft
drinks) therefore contain a natural preservative.

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aheese is way of preserving milk for long periods of time. xn the process, the milk in cheese
becomes something completely unlike milk, but cheese has its own interesting and delicious
properties. aheese-making is a long and involved process that makes use of 

,   
and naturally formed
 to solidify milk proteins and fat and preserve them. Once turned into
cheese, milk can be stored for months or years.

The main preservatives that give cheese its longevity are salt and acids. The basic steps in cheese
making go something like this (for most common cheeses like cheddar):

!Ê irst, milk is inoculated with lactic acid bacteria and  . The lactic acid bacteria
convert the sugar in milk (lactose) to lactic acid. The rennet contains enzymes that
modify proteins in milk. ½pecifically, rennet contains rennin, an enzyme that converts a
common protein in milk called 
   into 
 , which does not dissolve in
water. The casein precipitates out as a gel-like substance that we see it as . The
casein gel also captures most of the fat and calcium from the milk. ½o the lactic acid and
the rennet cause the milk to curdle, separating into curds (the milk solids, fats, proteins,
etc.) and whey (mostly water). A gallon of milk (about 8 pounds) yields only about 1.25
pounds of cheese -- the weight that is lost is all the water in milk.
!Ê The curds and whey are allowed to soak until the lactic acid bacteria create a lactic acid
concentration that is just right. At that point, the whey is drained off and salt is added.
!Ê Now the curds are pressed in a cheese press -- lightly at first to allow the escape of the
remaining whey, then severely (up to a ton of pressure) to solidify the cheese.
!Ê inally, the cheese is allowed to age (ripen) for several months in a cool place to improve
its taste and consistency. A sharp cheddar cheese has been aged a year or more. uring
this time, enzymes and bacteria continue to modify proteins, fats and sugars in the
cheese. The holes in ½wiss cheese occur during ripening -- ½wiss cheese is ripened in a
cool place for several weeks, and then put in a warm place (70 degrees , 21 degrees a or
so) for four to six weeks, where special bacteria ferment the remaining lactose and
produce carbon dioxide bubbles in the cheese.

As you can see, cheese-making is complicated. xt produces a product that preserves milk proteins
and sugars with acids and salt.
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There are three classes of chemical preservatives commonly used in foods:

!Ê  
 (such as sodium benzoate)
!Ê ‰ (such as sodium nitrite)
!Ê % (such as sulphur dioxide)

xf you look at the ingredient labels of different foods, you will frequently see these different
types of chemicals used. Another common preservative that you will commonly see on food
labels is ascorbic acid. All of these chemicals either inhibit the activity of bacteria or kill the
bacteria.

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Nuclear radiation is able to kill bacteria without significantly changing the food containing the
bacteria. ½o if you seal food in plastic and then radiate it, the food will become sterile and can be
stored on a shelf without refrigeration. Unlike canning, however, you do not significantly change
the taste or texture of the food when you irradiate it.

The A recently approved the irradiation of beef, and the irradiation of chicken has been
approved for some time. xrradiation of these meats could prevent many forms of food poisoning.
However, many people have a significant problem with the words "nuclear radiation." Therefore,
irradiated food is not very common.