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From: ems@amdahl.UUCP (ems)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: nasty food ingredients
Message-ID: <2074@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 14:46:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.2074
Posted: Thu Oct  3 14:46:26 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 07:10:56 EDT
References: <279@weitek.UUCP> <24@calma.uucp> <159@aplvax.UUCP> <887@burl.UUCP>
Organization: Circle C Shellfish Ranch, Shores-of-the-Pacific, Ca
Lines: 38

> 
> d) To bring up a question, since the author to whose article I am following-up
> signed his/her article "Yours for natural foods" [paraphrase]:  I would like
> to hear from some of you natural food types just how you expect to feed
> 8 million people in New York City (as an example) tons upon tons of food
> everyday without using chemical preservatives.  As a start, don't even
> bother trying to tell me about natural preservatives that will keep foods
> fresh for 2 weeks -- you need to be able to preserve a lot of foods for
> a minimum of 6 months.

It is very easy to preserve food for long periods of time without
chemical aids.  The means used do, however, change the taste, color,
and apearance of the product.  Among the ways are: Freezing, drying,
pickling, salting, canning, vacuum packing, freeze drying,
fermenting, and spiceing.  These procedures have led to many of the
favorite ethnic foods of the world.  Noodles, Jerky, pickles, salt pork,
canned peaches, (and if you include survivalists and campers as
an odd ethnic group: vacuum packed hard wheat and freeze dried
chicken glop...), cheese, yogurt, cold slaw, salami, 100 yr eggs ... the
list goes on and on.  Anyone who lived on a farm before modern
transportation and refrigeration can tell you how to 'put up'
enough food to get you through 2 *years* or more without resorting
to 'artificial' preservatives or even high technology.
You have to like the kind of product you get though... Pemmican, yech!
(The reason for two years?  Why, what do you do when there is a
drought/flood/other problem and you have a crop failure?)

Then of course there is the fact that most any grain or bean left
intact and dry will keep for decades and some will even sprout
after much longer storage.  Imagine, fresh bean sprouts after
years of storage.  And tofu ... yum!

-- 

E. Michael Smith  ...!{hplabs,ihnp4,amd,nsc}!amdahl!ems

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