With the increasingly frequent occurrence of natural disasters and recessions around the world, people are beginning to realize how valuable a private storage of food can be. Whether it will get your family through a brief period of unemployment or a few days until the emergency personnel can arrive, it can save your life.

Peoples and civilizations throughout the ages have also realized the value of this practice and developed several methods to store their food through the winter. Food preservation has existed for thousands of years.

One methods of food preservation is drying. Archeological evidence suggests that both Middle Eastern and Asian cultures used the method of drying their food from times as early as 12,000 B.C.

The main method of drying was the sun, but the wind was also used occasionally. Later, more evidence was found in other cultures of the use of the drying method.

The most commonly dried food was meat and included fish, wild game, and domestic animals. However, vegetables and fruit were also commonly dried in the earlier cultures.

Romans, for example, cultivated a love of dried fruit. Later, during the middle ages, the technique spread to Europe. However, certain areas did not receive enough sunlight to effectively dry the food.

Instead, they built “still houses.” “Still houses” contained a large fire and the heat of the fire dried the foods.

These houses were also used for smoking some food stuffs. Smoking was another effective for of food storage.

Both of these methods are still commonly used today. Freezing was another preservation method in colder climates.

Even if the climate was not cold enough to freeze foods, people realized the role that colder temperatures could play in lengthening the life time of food. It was very common to place things in cool cellars, caves, and streams for storage.

In the childhood years of America, the large mansions and estates would build ice houses that were filled with ice in which to store their food. These giant ice boxes would last through a good portion of the summer and allow foods to be stored much longer.

In the late 1800’s Clarence Birdseye found out that meats and vegetables that were froze quickly tasted better than those meats and vegetables that were frozen slowly. He developed and perfected his method into the packages of frozen Brand Levitra vegetables that we have today.

Another method of preservation includes pickling. Pickling is when foods are preserved in vinegar or another type of acid.

Vinegar is made of starches and sugars that are fermented to alcohol. This alcohol is then oxidized by bacteria and becomes acetic acid.

The preservation of food through pickling probably began when food was put in wine or beer to preserve it. The low pH helps the food to be preserved for longer.

After awhile, the wine or beer went sour, but they discovered that the food in the beer was different, but still good. The common shortages of food made the people of this time never waste anything.

The pickling brine was used for a variety of things. Romans used it to make a fish pickle sauce which they called “garum.”

“Garum” has a very strong flavor. Ketchup began as a type of oriental fish brine.

When it finally made it to America, sugar was added to make a similar recipe to the one we have today. Results of the leftover pickling sauces include chutneys, relishes, piccalillis, mustards, and ketchups.

Worcester sauce was also made this way, but on accident. It was discovered many years last in the basement of Lea and Perrins Chemist shop.

Another early form of food preservation was curing. Curing is very similar to drying, because it is a process of dehydration.

In history, the food was prepared with salt and then cured. By the 1800’s, people discovered that certain salts preserved the red color in meat. Previously the meat maintained a nasty gray color that was very unappetizing.

Another method of food preservation that is still very popular today is canning. Canning is when you put food in jars or cans and heat them to a temperature that kills the microorganism and stops the enzymes.

When the jars are heated and then cooled, the seal is vacuumed shut. This seal keeps other microorganisms out of the food.

These methods of preservation are still used widely today. Food preservation is necessary to the survival of winter and other natural disasters that destroy crops.

Author Bio: Ronald Pedactor has written hundreds of articles relating to food storage. He recommends food storage reviews for saving money with food storage.

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Ronald Pedactor
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Category: Food and Drink
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