Unlearning what we had learned

Over thousands of years, humans have learned to live off the land, to cultivate it. Raise herds of domesticated animals and faced with the realities of a world with no electricity, no artificial cooling. People had to invent ways to keep their food in plentiful times, to use in times of need.

It's quite disheartening to see how in the past 200 years, all new preservation techniques focused on one thing, not changing the shape, color or taste of things that need to be preserved. (While keeping it edible of course). Sadly nothing new was introduced. At least, I don't know of anything new.

Sure, Canning, freeze drying, and even pasteurization are  preservation methods, but they all try to work in a way that the original ingredient doesn't change properties. Unlike say, smoking, where a new flavor is introduced to the item being preserved. Be that meat, cheese (smoking and "cheesing" are two preservation methods), fish or even vegetables. Although those last ones always prove to be difficult to preserve.

Now, everything with preservatives has to have a 28 letter word meaning some form of chemical substance that is used for preservation, worse, some of these "poisonous" materials might break down to very dangerous compounds and react with containers in very nasty ways.

Culturally speaking, it's sad that we forgot things our ancestors knew by heart. When we can navigate our way around the Internet, asleep and blind folded. With the exception of Wine (and other spirits) we have no collection of anything that gets better with time. Or even remains edible after that "expiration" date has passed!

So what does that expiration day means?

To be continued...