Preserving Foods

Growing up, I spent many days with my grandmother at her house. She maintained her own greenhouse, and by working with her I learned quite a bit about plants, gardening, and the methods of preserving foods. You could say that I learned to process food in the truest sense of the word.

The processing of food began in the days before recorded history. People had to preserve food to survive, so they dried or froze their vegetables and meat and they stored roots in cool, dry areas. Some foods were salted to increase the amount of time they would keep. Processing and preserving food was a matter of survival.

These days, people still preserve their own foods in their homes, though the methods have improved. Growing up, I learned everything about the process of growing, preparing, and preserving different kinds of foods. From canning fruits to blanching vegetables and freezing or processing meat in a pressure canner, I learned many different ways to make food last longer.

This is an interesting subject because although we think of unhealthy junk foods when we hear the word "processed," there are still methods of processing foods that don't make them unhealthy. We used sugar and salt during the processing, but the foods were still healthy.

Considering that it's possible to process and preserve foods without making them unhealthy, we should all be wondering why there are so many additives in the foods we buy from the grocery store. They might help the food keep longer, but wouldn't it be worth adding a few years to our lives in exchange for eating foods that don't last quite as long?

I'm of the opinion that corporations feel pressure to make their foods as tasty as possible, so they add things like salt. Now that excess sodium is in so many of our daily foods, we've come to expect it.

Food that doesn't have added salt can easily be distinguished, and it doesn't taste as good to us. The same is true of the sugar and fat that's added to our foods.

Still, there is hope out there in the grocery store. The recent attention given to the unhealthiness of many common food items has led more manufacturers to process foods in natural and healthy ways, which is very commendable on their part.