DailyDirt: Keeping Food Around Longer... And Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Aug 2nd 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Civilization has greatly depended on the our ability to store food for long periods of time. Without various food preservation techniques, our daily lives would be much different. Perhaps we've strayed a bit too far away from fresh foods, but the benefits of refrigeration, preservatives and food packaging probably outweigh the costs. Here are just a few articles on the topic of food preservation to ponder while you enjoy your next processed meal.

Twinkies are back on stores shelves with a new and improved... shelf life of 45 days. Previously, Twinkies had a shelf life of just 26 days -- and not an indefinite lifespan that most people assume. [url]
Canned foods can last a really long time, and some folks actually prefer the taste of canned items that have been aged. The definition of a shelf life is not about when a packaged food is inedible, but when the food acquires a noticeably different flavor compared to a newly-manufactured item. [url]
About 70% of the food we eat is stored or transported at chilled temperatures. And if you think that's a high percentage: "An astonishing 80% of the nation's potato output is cut, processed, frozen, bagged, and distributed as French fries." [url]

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Filed Under: aged, canning, flavor, food, frozen, inedible, packaging, preservation, refrigeration, shelf life, twinkies

14 Comments

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Anonymous, 2 Aug 2013 @ 5:30pm

Twinkies are back.
Woo-hoo. No thanks. I'll stick with Little Debbie Cloud Cakes. They're the same dang thing, but a better value. You get more (15-some oz. Cloud Cakes vs. 13-some ounce Twinkies) for less money. Sorry, Hostess, but in your absence I moved on.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2013 @ 5:52pm

Twinkies - another American capitalism success story. /s (jic)
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- McCrea (profile), 2 Aug 2013 @ 7:41pm
  
  Re:
  It is. I'm sure some investors made bank.
  
  Sure hostess went tits up, but surely American capitalism is more about quick returns more than selling over-priced goods forever.
  
  The failures of management not daring to try to compete with Little Debbie by using more reasonable pricing cannot be blamed on capitalism.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2013 @ 8:50pm
    
    Re: Re:
    The government does not need to regulate corporations, they self regulate and would never do anything wrong. Those pensions were just asking to be stolen, nothing wrong there, stupid employees.
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steell (profile), 2 Aug 2013 @ 7:18pm

Spent ten years as a nation wide reefer driver (my own tractor and trailer), and refrigerated storage and shipping really is a different world. Loading apple in August that were picked the last Sept and stored in a refrigerated warehouse. Delivering frozen beef to the caves near Kansas City, watching the refrigeration unit on the trailer suck down fuel as it runs continuously trying to keep the ice cream in the trailer at minus 20 F in Phoenix when it's 115 outside.

And that was the good side. Sure am glad I'm not in that business any longer.
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- McCrea (profile), 2 Aug 2013 @ 7:43pm
  
  Re: Trailer Full of Reefer
  Wow. I'm surprised you remember anything :)
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  - Anonymous, 3 Aug 2013 @ 3:28pm
    
    Re: Re: Trailer Full of Reefer
    He does, with a little help from his friends Big Ben, Rubber Duck, and hog-hauling Jimmy.
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steell (profile), 2 Aug 2013 @ 8:02pm

I was one of the few that didn't use illegal drugs to get the job done, Diet Coke and Cigarettes let me cover the miles. Now, suffering the effects of cancer and chemo, I wish that Indiana would legalize medical marijuana. Not that I worry about getting busted anyway, the State would not want to pay my medical expenses. :D
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Andrew D. Todd, 3 Aug 2013 @ 1:41am

Why Such Cheap Stuff?
I dare say I've spent a lot of time living in urban, ethnic neighborhoods, but my notions of food porn are more classy than Twinkies. You know, Greek Baklava, blackberry jam pastries, coffee rolls made with maple syrup and walnuts, pecan fudge, Amaretto Toast (a sort of cookie which used to be sold in Italian bodegas, flavored with anise), stuff like that. And of course Pepperidge Farm cookies, which are essentially a mass-produced form of haute-cuisine French pastry cooking. I've always thought of Hostess Twinkies as something cheap and nasty, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, served to a captive audience of children on school outings, back before the schools got the nutrition bug.
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hopponit (profile), 4 Aug 2013 @ 9:41pm

food
Does anyone else remember the show Dinosaurs by the Jim Henson? One show was when they celebrated "Refrigerator Day". The story was that the refrigerator was the backbone of dinosaur civilization. It allowed them to form a culture instead of just foraging for food all the time. Cool show, wish they would bring it back.
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- Anonymous, 5 Aug 2013 @ 6:10pm
  
  Re: food
  "Smoo!"
  "Are you now, or have you ever been, an herbivore?"
  "Not the mama!"
  "I made a big poop!"
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Aug 2013 @ 9:46am

Absolute bullshit.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Aug 2013 @ 9:46am

He knows it.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Aug 2013 @ 9:47am

And he knows.
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