Food preservation is the science of extending the shelf life of food while maintaining as much as possible of its nutritional quality and avoiding the growth of unwanted micro-organisms. Food preservation has been practiced in a variety of ways for hundreds of years.

There are a number of different ways of preserving foods. Some involve storage methods, some involve packaging, and some involve treating the food in particular ways prior to or during storage, either cooking it in whole or part or combining it with other foods or substances.

The basic idea behind all forms of food preservation is either...

• To slow down the activity of disease-causing bacteria
• To kill the bacteria altogether