Conservation 1. To conserve for the future

The axiom “nothing in this world is invariable” has an application when the one is about conserving things for the future, like foods, collections of plants and animals, buildings or objects of art. The materials are continuously submitted to diverse destructive effects, like, for example, the action of the oxygen of the air, the attack of microorganisms etc. The conservation implicates to delay, in a way, that destruction. For that, different processes can be used according to the one that we wish to conserve. For the foods, some ancient methods of conservation are still used, alike, for example, the dissection, the smoking, the fermentation (mainly of drinks), the heat treatment and the cold storage, though that technique has been basically improved. On the other hand, it was supposed that the new systems, alike the freezing and the irradiation, eliminated totally the old ones and already tested the processes. Against that, it was demonstrated that all have some special utility and, nowadays, they are taken for giving the grand assortment of foods which we can dispose during all year long. In the ancient times of the local authority, the fresh merchandises in general, only could be consumed during short periods of the year. The diverse foods should be conserved when there was an excess in the harvests or in the abattoirs, or when the hunting and the fishing had been profitable. The conservation was done by mean of dissection or smoking and, mainly, by the salting of foods alike the fish, the meat and the butter. For that reason, the salt and other substances which turned more pleasant the taste of the exceeding raw materials converted into merchandise very much appreciated by the commerce. Such type of unilateral nourishment perhaps explains the well known net of our ancestors: the herrings and the pork meat unfastened salt and, consequently, those should be rinsed in grand quantities of beer.

Until few decades ago, it was used to produce home-made tins of vegetables, and most housewives prepared liquors, jams and jellies. Actually, the responsibility of the conservation of foods is assumed by the grand specialized industries. The operation, in a grand scale and with reasonable methods, provides tins at an accessible price, and it is produced according to scientific principles and by mean of controls made by very rigorous laboratories, as much of the raw materials, as of the finished products. Each year, some greater quantities of foods industrially conserved are consumed, which implicates a radical reduction of the work at home. It remains to say that the industry of tins included, among the own goods, the commodity. As a typical example, we can mention the pre-prepared products, already cooked, which only need to be heated before consumption.