Food preserving is all about the storage of raw, cooked and dried foods to be kept over an extended period of time. To keep food over this time, preservatives are often added to help stop the food from spoiling. There are quite a number of preservatives and additives that are used to delay decomposition, preserve texture, appearance, flavour, nutrition and edibility till the end of the foods expiry date. This date should be printed somewhere on the packaging along with the additives that have been used in the making of the food to keep it preserved. The additives also help to prevent food poisoning over this period. There are artificially made preservatives and those that are natural. Natural food preservatives may be listed as processes of freezing, salting, smoking, drying, pickling and canning or bottling.
The natural food preservatives used for these methods may include a number of substances and these may range from sugar, salt, and vinegar. Although these are considered ingredients they can also help to preserve the food in the right quantities. Salt inhibits bacterial growth, yeast and mold under the right conditions and removes moisture by dehydration. Salted meat has been known to last a number of years. Sugar is another product that has been used as a preservative. Foods preserved in sugar are either stored in sugar syrup or crystallized in sugar. This has the same effect as the salt by inhibiting micro-organism and bacterial growth by removal of moisture or osmosis. Another natural food preservative is vinegar, and these foods are often said to be pickled. Vinegar has concentrations of acetic acid and this is what kills the microbes and stops food from spoiling.
Other methods are through freezing and a number of foods can be done this way. Meat is best frozen raw, while vegetable are usually blanched before freezing and fruit is most often cooked and then frozen. Smoking is another method and this usually involves meat of different kinds which are put into a smoke house where the temperature is maintained at a certain level which causes dehydration of the meat and absorption of the smoke which has antibacterial properties. Drying is also a natural preserving process and this is often used for fruits, herbs, meats, vegetables and some other products. Different ways to dehydrate these foods are used which helps to inhibit decay. Canning (USA) or known as bottling in other countries is used generally for fruit, and this process includes placing prepared fruit in bottles with a syrup or water, a lid is then used for sealing, either as a screw top or with a clip and the whole item is then placed in water and brought to a certain temperature and maintained at this for a certain period of time. All these processes usually do not require artificial preservatives or additives.