From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Food preservation is about the ways and means which help to preservefood. Food spoils frombacteria if it is not treated. For thousands of years, humans have used methods of preserving food, so that they can store food to eat later. The simplest methods of preserving food, such as drying strips offish ormeat in the hot sun have been used for thousands of years, and they are still used today byindigenous peoples. The other ancient method is to use salt, and often drying and salting are done together.
Food spoils mainly bydecomposition bymicroorganisms. There are five basic techniques which make food last longer:
Killing the microorganisms, or preventing them from multiplying
Contact of microoganisms with food is prevented
Certainadditives prevent or slow the growth of microoganisms; this is often calledcuring
Converting the food into a longer-lasting form (for example, fresh goat'smilk can be converted intocheese oryogurt, which lasts much longer than fresh milk)
Many common methods use several of these approaches at the same time. For example, pickles preserved in a jar are heated then put in a mixture of vinegar and brine. Fruit jams and jellies are heated and mixed with a large amount of sugar. Some preserved fruit is heated and then mixed with alcohol (for example, Brandy) and a large amount of sugar. Smoked hams are cured in brine and then exposed to the smoke from burning wood chips.
