DailyDirt: Keeping Food Around Longer... And Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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

DailyDirt: No Refrigeration Necessary...?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

For centuries, people didn't have convenient refrigeration for storing food for long periods of time. Nowadays, we take refrigerators for granted and keep things in them even when it's not necessary. Here are just a few cool examples of ways to avoid eating spoiled food.

• There's a prototype for a sustainable portable refrigerator for small volume containers that doesn't require electricity. It still needs to be heated up in some way for the thermodynamics of it to work, but it's an interesting self-contained device for remote locations... or for camping trips? [url]
• Some nicely-designed containers could help folks store food without refrigeration while still keeping food fresh. Storing eggs at room temperature seems really strange to most Americans. [url]
• Mohammed Bah Abba won a Rolex Award for re-discovering a pot-in-pot refrigeration device (aka a zeer) that can keep food cool by taking advantage of evaporative cooling. A zeer costs about $1 to make and is just a couple of nested clay pots with wet sand between them. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: energy, evaporative cooling, food, preservation, refrigeration, zeer