“Food Preservation and processing”

“Terms in Food Preservation and the History of Food Preservation”

Food Preservation -The process of treating and handling food in such a way as to stop or
greatly slow down spoilage and prevent foodborne illness while maintaining nutritional value,
texture and flavor.
Terms in Food Preservation
1. Additive
2. Antioxidant 3. Curing
4. Dehydration
5. Fermentation
6. Irradiation
7. Oxidation
8. Cooking

Additive – a chemical compound that is added to foods to give them some desirable quality,
such as preventing them from spoiling.
Antioxidant – a chemical compound that has the ability to prevent the oxidation of substances
with which it is associated.
Curing – a term used for various methods of preserving foods, most commonly by treating them
with salt or sugar.
Dehydration – the removal of water from a material.
Fermentation – a chemical reaction in which sugars are converted to organic acids.
Irradiation – the process by which some substances, such as a food, is exposed to some form of
radiation, such as gamma rays or x rays.
Oxidation – a chemical reaction in which oxygen reacts with some other substance.
Cooking – a simple and common of preserving food by heating it to some minimum
temperature.
GLOBAL BEGGININGS
➢ Preserving food is as old as the first time anyone had leftovers.
➢ Even the time long past, people around the world had ways to preserve food: natural
cooling and freezing, drying, curing, smoking, pickling, fermenting, and preserving in
honey.
➢ Food historians believe pre-historic people preserved food accidentally through
geography and living conditions.
Historical origins of the Food Preservation Drying
➢ In ancient times the sun and wind would have naturally dried foods. Evidence shows that
middle East and oriental cultures actively dried foods as early as 12,000 BC. in the hot
sun.
➢ Vegetables and fruits were also dried from the earliest times. Freezing
➢ Freezing was an obvious preservation method to the appropriate climates.
➢ In America estates had icehouses built to store ice and food on ice. Soon the “icehouse”
became an “icebox”.
➢ In the 1800’s mechanical refrigeration was invented and was quickly put to use.
➢ Also, in the late 1800’s Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing a very low
temperature made for better tasting meats and vegetables. Fermenting
➢ Fermentation was not invented, but rather discovered.
➢ The skill of ancient peoples to observe, harness, and encourage these fermentations are
admirable.
Pickling
➢ Pickling is a preserving food in vinegar (or other acid).
➢ Pickling may have originated when food was placed in the wine or beer to preserve it
since both have low pH.
➢ The Romans made a concentrated fish pickle sauce called “garum”. It was powerful stuff
packing a lot of fish taste in a few drops.
Curing
➢ The earliest curing was actually dehydration.
➢ Early cultures used salt to help desiccate foods.
➢ In the 1800’s it was discovered that certain sources of salt gave meat a red color instead
of the usual unappetizing grey.
Jam and Jelly
➢ In ancient Greece quince was mixed with honey, dried somewhat and packed tightly into
jars.
Canning
➢ Canning is the process in which foods are placed in jars or cans and heated to a
temperature that destroys microorganisms and inactivates enzymes.
➢ Canning is the newest of the food preservations methods being pioneered in the 1790’s
when a French confectioner Nicholas Appert, discovered that the application of heat to
food in sealed glass bottles preserved the food from deterioration.