Preserving Food This Holiday Season

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Highlights:

• Food wastage is a huge global issue which impacts the environment and the economy
• Preservation of food may help combat this issue
• Cooking food properly, refrigerating and freezing food, keeping food separated and washing your hands can all prevent growth of bacteria and keep food fresher for longer

Food is an important part of an individual's life, providing them with energy and helping their growth. Food wastage has become a major issue worldwide in today's age. One of the sustainable solutions to counter the food wastage issues is food preservation.

Concepts like sun drying, salting and pasteurization were introduced depending on climatic and seasonal factors. Preservation enabled humans to form communities, stopped them from killing animals and brought about a leisure attitude keeping food for additional time. Rapid industrialization and advent of lean methods paved the way for processes like thermal treatment, canning and freezing which gave a better shelf-life extension by controlling the pathogens (1^✔).

‘Don�t let food go waste this holiday season, proper food preservation is the key.’

The concept of preserving food grew rapidly with the objective to provide food to all. The end goal of food preservation is to stop any biochemical reactions and to restrict entry and growth of microbes. It allows minimization of wastage with improved shelf life. Some of the popular conventional preservation techniques like heating, drying and freezing have been implemented in large industries (2^✔).

There are certain disadvantages to heat treatment and freezing methods such as food shrinkage, texture and nutrient loss and organic properties leading to a huge overall loss in the food product (3^✔).

Keeping all this in mind, it is important to help maintain the integrity of food with preservation.

Tips for Food Preservation

• Cook Food Properly: Meat, chicken, turkey, seafood, and eggs can carry germs that cause food poisoning. Use a food thermometer to ensure these foods have been cooked to a safe internal temperature.
• Keep the Danger Zone Away: Bacteria can grow rapidly in the danger zone between 40�F and 140�F. After food is prepared, keep hot food, hot, and cold food, cold. Refrigerate or freeze any perishable food within 2 hours (1 hour if food is exposed to temperatures above 90�F). The temperature in the refrigerator should be set at or below 40�F and the freezer at or below 0�F.
• Wash Your Hands: For at least 20 seconds with soap and warm or cold water before, during, and after preparing food and before eating. Always wash hands after handling uncooked meat, chicken and other poultry, seafood, flour, or eggs.
• Avoid Raw Dough or Batter: Dough and batter made with flour or eggs can contain harmful germs, such as E. coli and Salmonella. Do not taste or eat raw dough or batter that is meant to be baked or cooked (4^✔).
• Keep Food Separated: Keep meat, chicken, turkey, seafood, and eggs separate from all other foods at the grocery store and in the refrigerator. Prevent juices from meat, chicken, turkey, and seafood from dripping or leaking onto other foods by keeping them in containers or sealed bags. Store eggs in their original carton in the main compartment of the refrigerator.
• Don't keep leftovers for too long: Eat leftovers within 3-4 days to avoid tossing them out.
• Freezer to the Rescue: The longer that foods are in the freezer, the more moisture evaporation will occur. While the food is safe to eat anywhere from one to three months, the taste will not be the same when stored for that length of time.

References:

1. The extent of food waste generation across EU-27: different calculation methods and the reliability of their results - (https:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25161274/)
2. Ohmic heating for the dairy industry: a potential technology to develop probiotic dairy foods in association with modifications of whey protein structure - (https:repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/52006/1/document_47448_1.pdf)
3. Flexible thin-layer dielectric barrier discharge plasma treatment of pork butt and beef loin: effects on pathogen inactivation and meat-quality attributes - (https:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25475266/)
4. Food Safety for the Holidays - (https:www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/holidays.html)

Source: Medindia

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