Project Report  

Project: Food Preservatives          

Class: 744                     Date: 2/6/17                       Mrs. Goldfisher                  IS125    

Names:  Anida,Fatiha,Marco,Eduardo                    

Question: What are different additives and techniques that we use to preserve food?

Claim: Food preservatives and preservation techniques preserve food by either slowing down the activity or killing the bacteria that would cause food to spoil.

Evidence:                                                                                                              

Food Preservation methods:                    

1)Drying             9)Pickling                              17)Vacuum packing

2)Cooling           10)Canning                              18)Pasteurization                                                                                

3)Freezing         11)Jellying                              19)Irradiation

4)Boiling           12)Chemical preservation               20)Artificial food additives                        5)Heating           13)Jugging                             21)Irradiation                   

6)Salting            14)Fermentation                        22)Pulsed electric field electroporation  7)Sugaring         15)Industrial/modern techniques      24)Nonthermal plasma                                         8)Smoking          16)Pasteurization                     25)High-pressure food preservation

When you preserve foods there is a technique that destroys the enzymes found in foods that cause it to spoil or to make it discolor quickly. Temperature  could possibly destroy fragile enzymes or make them stronger. There are also many techniques like refrigeration which refrigerate or freezes foods and is the most popular type of preservation. It slows down the bacterial action or when you freeze foods the bacteria is completely inactive. Freezing does not change the taste or the texture of the most meats and has minimal effect on vegetables. However, sometimes things like fruits  can become mushy for many reasons. Another technique that is popular is canning. You have to boil the foods to kill all the bacteria, then you need to seal it to prevent any new bacteria from getting in. Since the can is completely sterile, which means free from  bacteria or other living organisms,  the food won’t spoil.

 Reasoning:

  This shows that food preservatives work by slowing down or destroying bacteria and enzymes that cause spoilage. This happens because many methods of food preservation are targeted at doing this. For example, freezing food slows down bacteria and heating destroys enzymes that would otherwise speed up the molding and spoiling of food products. Pressure canning extracts moisture, which would otherwise speed up the spoilage of food. Since nearly every method we use to preserve food tries to do these things in one way or another, it is safe to conclude that these are the manners in which we use preservatives and preserve food.

Rebuttal:    

Food preservatives are not useful.

 Food preservatives are useful to help our foods slow down the process of spoiling or discoloring quicky. The enzymes in foods are destroyed by a preservation technique that cause the foods not to spoil. Some things like dehydration or freeze-drying are preservation techniques that help preserve the food. Dehydration dries food and makes bacteria completely inactive when dried then kept in an airtight containers to last quite a long time. Freeze-drying is a special type of drying that removes all moisture and tends to have an  effect on a food’s taste to make it different from normal foods.When salt was the main way to preserve food, salt reserves and trade decided if a country was powerful or not, because no salt meant that the army could not travel. In addition to the modern day uses we have for food preservatives and other food preservations techniques, we owe early food preservation methods the credit of deciding which empires would come to rule huge amounts of land and these cultures still affect us today. Without preservatives, our culture and laws would be very  different, because many great empires would not have spread their influence, and we wouldn’t have this odd combination of Roman laws, Greece democracy and the modern, advanced morals and philosophies of today.                    

Websites:

How Food Preservation Works. http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/food-preservation.htm

Artificial Preservatives. http://www.bakerpedia.com/ingredients/artificial-preservatives/

11 Foods We Couldn’t Have Without Preservatives. http://mentalfloss.com/article/62403/11-foods-we-couldnt-have-without-preservatives

Portaportal.com. https://guest.portaportal.com/aufisher