31 min listen
How can I keep fruit & veg fresh for longer?
FromCrowdScience
ratings:
Length:
33 minutes
Released:
Dec 17, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
As many of us gear up for the annual Christmas feast, some of you may be wondering how to eat everything before it goes off. It’s a great question, as the UN puts global food waste at a whopping 1.3 billion tonnes a year – that’s one third of all edible produce being thrown in the bin.
So this week the team investigates listener Peter’s query about what makes some fruit and vegetables rot faster than others. Preserving food used to be about ensuring nomadic populations could keep moving without going hungry, but these days some things seem to have an almost indefinite shelf-life. Is it about better packaging or can clever chemistry help products stay better for longer? A Master Food Preserver explains how heat and cold help keep microbes at bay, and how fermentation encourages the growth of healthy bacteria which crowd out the ones that make us ill.
Presenter Datshiane Navanayagam learns how to make a sauerkraut that could keep for weeks, and investigates the gases that food giants use to keep fruit and veg field-fresh. But as the industry searches for new techniques to stretch shelf-life even further could preservatives in food be affecting our microbiome? Research shows sulphites may be killing off ‘friendly’ gut bacteria linked to preventing conditions including cancer and Crohn’s disease.
Produced by Marijke Peters for BBC World Service.
Featuring:
Christina Ward, Master Food Preserver
Dr Heidy den Besten, Food Microbiologist, Wageningen University
Ian Shuttlewood, Tilbury Cold Store
Professor Sally Irwin, University of Hawaii
So this week the team investigates listener Peter’s query about what makes some fruit and vegetables rot faster than others. Preserving food used to be about ensuring nomadic populations could keep moving without going hungry, but these days some things seem to have an almost indefinite shelf-life. Is it about better packaging or can clever chemistry help products stay better for longer? A Master Food Preserver explains how heat and cold help keep microbes at bay, and how fermentation encourages the growth of healthy bacteria which crowd out the ones that make us ill.
Presenter Datshiane Navanayagam learns how to make a sauerkraut that could keep for weeks, and investigates the gases that food giants use to keep fruit and veg field-fresh. But as the industry searches for new techniques to stretch shelf-life even further could preservatives in food be affecting our microbiome? Research shows sulphites may be killing off ‘friendly’ gut bacteria linked to preventing conditions including cancer and Crohn’s disease.
Produced by Marijke Peters for BBC World Service.
Featuring:
Christina Ward, Master Food Preserver
Dr Heidy den Besten, Food Microbiologist, Wageningen University
Ian Shuttlewood, Tilbury Cold Store
Professor Sally Irwin, University of Hawaii
Released:
Dec 17, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Where Do All Our Vegetables Come From?: Have you ever seen a Brussels sprout growing in the wild? Neither has listener Pogo. by CrowdScience