Food Preservation: Modern Methods

There are various ways for food preservation, for thousands of years salting was the most dominant way. Inventions and industrialisation opened up new possibilities.

Canned Food
Canning is basically a method were you seal processed food in a completely air tight container. It was a method invented by the Frenchman Nicolas Appert. At first glass containers were used but soon metal tin canisters (hence "can") replaced the fragile jars. The method to treat the food before containing varies. Before mass production was possible it was an expensive method and only for armies or the wealthy. Today it is very cheap and found in supermarkets all over the world. From a nutricional aspect it is a good method since most products keep their nutrional qualities.

Frozen Food
Freezing food is as ancient as man, it early on must have been discovered how frozen made things keep for longer periods - in regions with cold winters meat could last for months and were kept in cold houses. But since there were no actual means to actively freeze food it was only when well in to the 20th century artificial freezing was made possible that it became a all year round food preservation method for all climates. Freezing is a very effective way to preserve food, most of the nutrional value is kept.

Vacuum Packing
In the 1960´s vacuum packing became common. The idea is basically to remove maximum amount of air from a product and then seal it. This slows down detoriative processes by several times. Another related method is Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) which changes the atmosphere surrounding the packaged food, most of the time Oxygen is replaced by Nitrogen.

Freeze Drying
This quite advanced method involves freezing the product, then lowering the pressure by vacuuming, heat is applied and most water evaporates. The product is then sealed to avoid absorving new moisture. Besides from becoming quite unperishable they also loose a lot of weight and become better suited for transport. Coffee is an example of a product that commonly is freeze dried.

Food Irradiation
This controversial method exposes food with radiation, thus killing harmful micro organisms. It is only permitted in little more than 40 countries. Concerns are with human health and also how sub standard production methods can be "hidden" since regular testing of products won´t expose them.

Modern Preservatives
A number of substances are habitually added to food with the object to prolong shelf life. They include adding substances that remove oxygen and kill microbes. These methods are quite often criticised from a human health aspect being accused of causing various illnesses and diseases.

There are quite a few more methods that I haven´t mentioned here (like steaming and sugaring). If you feel that one is so important it should be included, just let me know!


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