Food Preservation

Preservative Foods

The process of treating and handling food in a way to stop or cut down spoilage to prevent the foodborne illness without hampering the texture, nutritional value and flavour is called as food preservation. In oher words food preservation is method of preparing food to be dtored for future use. Food preservation is practiced from tha early ages to make food edible for a long time. The food preserved in early times were cheese, butter, raisins, pemmican, sausage, bacon and grains.Food preservation involves preventing the growth of bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms and retarding the oxidation of fats causing rancidity. Food preservation to a great extent means preventing the contamination of food substances.

Preservation processes include:

• Heating to kill or denature organisms (e.g. boiling)
• Oxidation (e.g use of sulphur dioxide)
• Toxic inhibition (e.g. smoking, use of carbon dioxide, vinegar, alcohol etc)
• Dehydration (drying)
• Osmotic inhibition ( e.g use of syrups)
• Low temperature inactivation (e.g. freezing)
• Ultra high water pressure (e.g. fresherized, a kind of “cold” pasteurization, the pressure kills naturally occurring pathogens, which cause food deterioration and affect food safety.)
• Many combinations of these methods
• Chelation