People Are Realising Why Microwave Meals Have Such A Long Shelf Life, And I Had It All Wrong

microwave mealEver come across a question you didn’t realise you urgently needed an answer to until someone asks it?That happens to me all the time when I’m scrolling through social media. And recently, a peek at Reddit’s r/AskUK got my thoughts racing. “How does this tikka masala ready meal have a five-week shelf life with 0.5% salt and no obvious preservatives?”, site user u/Beautiful-Salt7885 asked members of the forum. They attached an image of a microwave meal’s ingredient list before asking, “Is there an error with the best before?” Why DO microwave meals have such a long shelf life?Speaking to Huffpost UK, Bryan Quoc Le, a food scientist, food industry consultant, and author of 150 Food Science Questions Answered, said: “Retort processing is taking a food product and heating it above boiling point at high pressure, so as to kill off spores of pathogenic microorganisms that could grow in a food product.“It’s the only validated process that can be done at a low enough cost for a microwave meal.” It works a little like higher-intensity pasteurisation. Foods in a sealed container are exposed to heat and pressure for a set amount of time to kill off bacteria before being cooled and sent off to retailers.And the food scientist told us that often, acidic ingredients are added too, as they “help to reduce the amount of time required to achieve a safe product. It’s helpful and often required in many cases because longer retort times result in heavily damaged flavours or mushy textures.” It’s vital that oxygen and moisture, which can cause mould, rot, and introduce disease, not come into contact with the food. In the case of retort processing, the carton is vacuum-sealed before heating to ensure sterility (this can work for canned or carton foods, too). But retort processing is only one method. The food can also be cooked separately before being placed in containers in a technique called aseptic packaging.People had some, er, interesting responses to the news“The food scientists have achieved the impossible,” Redditor u/Leedeegan1 commented under the original post.But others thought spices and salt were behind the product’s long shelf life (they can help, but the amounts in the pack, along with the other ingredients, would not have preserved them as well as the retort technique did).And one commenter fretted, “Is anyone else wondering what the hell we are eating and maybe even if it’s not packed with nasties then maybe I shouldn’t be eating this stuff?” However, like pasteurisation, retort cooking doesn’t use any “nasties” or even chemicals. As the original poster replied, “Nope, this is just spices, purees, creams, chicken, and rice.” Related...3 Foods An Expert Thinks Are Ruining Your SleepPeople Are Just Realising Button Mushrooms Are The 'Wrong Colour', And I Had No IdeaPeople Are Just Realising Why Oyster Cards Are Called That, And It's Clever

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