Food spoils, its a fact of life. Food detoriates mostly because of bateria and things like mold. There have been many ways of slowing spoilage, although no true way from totally stopping it. From the anciet proccesses of smoking or salting meat, to the modern day use of radiation to sterilize foods for spacemen. Sterilization is a key word here, as this serves as the main way of slowing the spoiling of food. It can be done many ways, such as salting, pickling, freezing, or heating. Cans depend on heating to sterilize the food inside. This simple mechanism is all it takes
How is food canned? The process is much the same as Apperts original system. Heat kills off stuff like bacteria which would otherwise ruin the food. They are sealed to keeg other bacterias from getting in the food. This is all it takes to preserve a lot of food, easily, to betransported to a war or to the grocer, never needing refrigeration or other special conditions.
Nowadays, in the advanced society that we are, canning hasn't change a bit. The modern canning factory still uses the same basic system to make cans of almost any imaginable type of food in the world. The only noticeable change is in speed, whereas the original cans took all day to finish, a factory can churn them out constantly in the thousands each day. So canning is a simple yet clever way creating cheap well preserved food to the modern family.
Canned food, is one of the most amazing and useful iventions of the latter part of the millieum, yet only recognized as a quick snack in just about all of the world. Canned food should and will always be considered one of the best inventions ever.
This page was created summer 2000