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Article: Rot, Decay, Putrefaction . . . Not With This Can-Do Technology
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- October 11, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Imagine a bowl of tuna or soup allowed to sit out for a month.
Even in the refrigerator, such foods would begin teeming with decay
organisms and eventually threaten to crawl away on their own. The
thought is enough, as some might say, to gag a maggot.
The same tuna or soup, however, would make a fine lunch if left
sealed in cans even after a year or more.
The technology that allows this type of food preservation is
nearly 200 years old. Nicholas Appert, a French confectioner, is
credited with the invention of canning. Deeply interested in
preservation of foods of all sorts, he discovered by experiment that
most could be preserved by heating them in closed glass jars.
Establishing his own ...