Swallow This

by Joanna Blythman

  The effect of this slanted emphasis on domestic food poisoning risk is to undermine the confidence of home cooks in our ability to prepare safe food. It makes us crave the apparent safety of processed, manufactured food and drink. In the opinion of one Twitter correspondent, ‘A factory is what we call a hygienic, efficient place to prepare food. It’s safer than a farmhouse kitchen.’ Such sentiment is widespread amongst generations that have never learned to cook and so are heavily dependent on processed food and takeaways. Bring on those protective additives please! But the truth of the matter is that with the exception of the nitrate and nitrite preservatives used in cured meats such as bacon, there is no overarching food safety reason to use preservatives or antioxidants in fresh food, unless, that is, you want to extend its natural life. And that, quite candidly, is the main function of preservative additives in processed food: to feed the illusion that food is fresher, and newer, than it actually is. Why bother? There’s money in it, as one purveyor of ‘shelf-life enhancement solutions’ says: ‘The ability to extend the shelf life of a food or beverage is all-important for manufacturers and retailers. By extending shelf life, the profitability is directly impacted in a positive direction.’ If that sounds a bit woolly, this balder reasoning from another such company makes the financial motivation a whole lot clearer: ‘There are no improvements that you can make to your food or beverage product that will boost your customer [retailer] satisfaction and increase your bottom line as much as shelf-life extension.’

  Supermarkets constantly lean on manufacturers to put longer ‘best before’ dates on chilled products. This helps to feed the consumer myth they encourage that it isn’t necessary to shop fairly frequently for food if you want it to be fresh. In 2013, Kathryn Callaghan, from the UK FSA’s Hygiene and Microbiology Division, warned the Royal Society for Public Health that ‘in the past 20 years, there has been an increasing trend’ for longer shelf life. She was talking in the context of ready-to-eat meats, one of the highest food poisoning risk categories, and said: ‘I actually visited a couple of smaller manufacturers and they told us there’s a lot of pressure on them … to put a long shelf life on their products.’

  Appreciating that it is losing the argument with consumers over E number additives, and keen to be seen to be responding to ‘clean label’ pressure from supermarkets, and driven by the desire for a long shelf life, the processed food industry has come up with newer techniques to make ‘fresh’ food last longer in less obvious ways. The name of the game is to lose artificial additives and replace them with those that sound more natural, but to do so is technically challenging. In the absence of straight like-for-like substitutes, manufacturers are adopting a belt and braces approach, using modern cocktails of shelf life-stretching substances to produce the desired effect, often in tandem with modified atmosphere packaging (MAP).

  Few of us notice the now extensive use of this preservation method in the chilled food aisles. By altering the composition of air in plastic packs so that it contains significantly less, or no, oxygen, MAP keeps all sorts of ‘fresh’ products looking young longer, just like Sleeping Beauty, who went to sleep for years but woke up exactly the same age. In conjunction with refrigeration, MAP is the technological fix that allows the surface of meat to remain ruby red when otherwise it would darken. It prevents young cheeses from developing moulds and stops ready-to-cook vegetables from appearing dry. In packs flushed with MAP, sliced meats and ‘fresh’ pasta won’t curl up at the edges. The breath of air you feel as you peel open a wedge of Parmesan, a bag of grated cheese, or a lunchtime salad bowl? That’s modified atmosphere.

  MAP used to be a technology that was utterly invisible. Now foods packaged using MAP must be labelled. In the tiniest writing, eagle-eyed consumers will spot the cosseting phrase ‘packaged in a protective atmosphere’. This form of words is a classic case of the processed food industry presenting its intervention in a favourable light. Alternative terminologies for MAP in the trade are ‘gas-flushed’, ‘gas-packaged’, ‘gas-shocked’, or even plain old ‘gassed’, but they don’t sound so nurturing.

  Compared to preservative chemicals, MAP is low down the list of consumer concerns. Many of us find it handy to have one of those stiff packets of pitta breads as a stand-by; few appreciate that they are packed in modified air. Using MAP, pre-baked pitta breads, and for that matter, bagels, wraps and tortillas stored at room temperature will see an increase in shelf life from around 5 to 20 days. Some bakery goods can be given a shelf life of up to 6 months if so packaged. MAP can add 5 or 6 days to the shelf life of a sandwich; just the job for petrol station forecourts and corner shops with a sluggish trade.

  Sealed in a modified atmosphere, the use-by date of a ready meal can be increased from between 2 and 5 days to between 5 and 10 days. Few of us would put a home-cooked meal in the fridge and eat it 10 days later; we would worry that it was too old. But a factory-made ready meal flushed with MAP can reach that age and still seem fresh. And bear in mind that the meat and fish in many processed foods – things like chicken salads, prawn sandwiches, chicken tikka, battered fish fillets – will more than likely have been bought by the manufacturer frozen, defrosted for the production process, and then sent out, gas-flushed and chilled, as ‘fresh’. Working out the age of many of the component ingredients in processed food would require the services of a very sharp detective, if not Interpol, but it is fair to assume that key ingredients are a whole lot less youthful than we like to think.

  MAP performs another service to ready meal manufacturers: it delays the onset of what is known in the factory food trade as ‘warmed over flavour’ or WOF, an off-taste likened to ‘damp dog hair’ that develops in pre-cooked fish, meat and poultry. Think of the heated caskets or ‘coffins’ filled with tepid meals that are sent out to hospitals and schools from far distant institutional kitchens, overlay it with the wet cardboard odour that hangs around a box of breaded fish that has spent too long in the freezer, add a pinch of trace metals from factory cooking and processing equipment, and you have a whiff of it.

  At the typical supermarket ‘butcher’s’ counter, no real butchery takes place. What’s on sale will most likely have arrived from the abattoir cutting line as pre-cut, ‘case ready’ meat in large containers filled with modified air. Meat imported frozen to the UK from abroad, New Zealand lamb for instance, can be defrosted at a processing plant, then flushed with MAP. Why? Counter staff don’t need to be properly trained butchers and it buys the retailer time, as one company active in MAP technology explains: ‘Using the correct modified atmosphere packaging conditions, shelf life of red meat can typically be increased from around 2–4 days to between 5 and 8 days under refrigeration, while that of poultry can be increased from 4–7 days to 16–21 days’.

  Chopped up chicken that’s 3 weeks old? It’s not the acme of freshness or food safety, but then no one in the food processing business dreams for one minute that it is, as Dansensor, a company specialising in MAP, makes plain:

  The driving force behind this distinctive gas packaging trend is the combination of a strong consumer appeal (fresh products) and a number of benefits to the retailers in connection with logistics, product presentation, value added products, extended food shelf life etc. The purpose of gas flushed packaging is to give the product a long shelf life.

  More often than not, MAP is used to disguise signs of what the food industry calls ‘light processing’: cleaning, washing, paring, coring and dicing. Whether you’re talking pineapple chunks, or microwave-ready broccoli florets, these interventions behind the scenes inevitably make fruits and vegetables more perishable because they disrupt cell tissues and break down cell membranes. In fact, these ‘fresh-cut products’ as they are known in the business, are what scientists refer to as ‘wounded’ tissues, so they deteriorate more rapidly than intact fruits and vegetables. MAP is used to delay the obvious signs of trauma – browning and off-flavours – but not always that effectively. Nutritional value is also reduced, but that loss is
invisible to the eye.

  Of course shelf life is not to be confused with freshness, as many of us discover when we open a puffy, modified atmosphere ‘pillow pack’ of salad leaves, only to watch them wilt soon after. Using MAP, prepared vegetable suppliers can add up to 8 days to the use-by date of salad leaves. Allowing for the fact that some time will have elapsed between the leaves being picked and then despatched to the processors for cleaning and packing – let’s add on another 1–2 days here – it’s no surprise that our bagged salads swoon like a Victorian heroine when exposed to natural air. Poor things, they might be as much as 10 days old, and consequently, their vitality and nutrient profile will be more weakened and degraded than we might like to think.

  Then again, collapsed salad leaves could be the worse for wear for other reasons. As a prelude to packing, they will have been put through a vigorous washing machine, or a Jacuzzi-style wash tank, designed to ensure lots of agitation. The best scenario here is that they are washed in spring water, a selling point on a minority of products sold by up-market retailers. Most, however, are sloshed around in tap water dosed with chlorine. Fruit acids – citric, tartaric, and more – in either powder or liquid form, are often also included in the mix. The chlorine passes for ‘cleaning’ and the acids act as a preservative by inhibiting the growth of bacteria. Some companies that consider themselves progressive and go-ahead are dumping the chlorine for fruit acid washes. Not only do they allow a ‘no chlorine’ claim to impress consumers, they also have another practical advantage, as the maker of one such product explains:

  NatureSeal FS is not adversely affected by the build-up of organic matter (soil, leaves, and other plant matter). This means that there is no need for frequent changes of wash tank water; some processors operate their wash tanks for at least 8 hours before discharging to drain. Chlorine, which is affected by organic matter, requires more frequent re-dosing and hence the danger of imparting taste taints. This requires wash tanks to be discharged and the water to be changed more often.

  In other words, in the cloudy world of fruit and vegetable preparation, it’s a choice between fresher water dosed frequently with chlorine, or less frequently changed water blended with acids. Either way, it’s a far cry from fruit and vegetables washed in the kitchen sink in tap water. But then, we’ve been trained by the public health establishment to view our own kitchen sinks with suspicion and to see the tired old gassed, chemical-dipped, bought fruits and vegetables as a safer bet.

  With their ‘before and after’ images, the brochures of companies that promote products to extend shelf life to processors are reminiscent of those adverts that illustrate life-changing claims for the transforming effects of hair transplants, or the wrinkle-diminishing capacity of face cream. Grow Green Industries introduces eatFresh-FC, somewhat enigmatically, as an ‘antimicrobial mix of synergistic blend of organic components, citrates and antioxidants [sic]’, which, it says, ‘preserves colour, texture and freshness, and is proven to extend the shelf life of cut and whole fruits, such as strawberries, apples, pears, mango, avocado and various vegetables’. It goes on to illustrate the point visually. It shows two strawberries after 7 days; the one on the left, the control, has not been dipped in eatFresh-FC; the one on the right has. The control looks rotten, the dipped berry looks immaculately luscious. There are kindred images of cut bananas, apples, pears and avocados, with the undipped fruits inevitably looking brown and old compared to their picture-perfect, dipped equivalents. Grow Green Industries recommends this miraculous, age-defying preparation for use in food service – that’s ready prepared food for bars, restaurants, takeaways, schools, hospitals and food retailers. Those oddly tasteless cut apple slices that turn up in airline meals and in sandwich bar ‘fresh’ fruit salads almost certainly owe their considerable keeping properties to such dips.

  ‘Edible coating technologies’ don’t stop there. Whole ‘fresh’ fruits and vegetables can be dipped, drenched or sprayed in products such as Semperfresh, described by its makers as a ‘combination of sugar esters and other edible ingredients: vegetable oils and plant cellulose’. It coats each fruit in a very thin, invisible, odourless and tasteless film, which ‘slows down the ripening process – effectively putting the produce “to sleep”.’ Semperfresh is recommended for use both pre- and post-harvest, and can help fruit stay fresh ‘for up to twice as long’. It is coatings such as this that make our cherries, apples and pears gleam, and give our peppers, cucumbers and aubergines their lustre.

  Moving on from coatings, a number of edible films, known in the food preservation business as ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ films, are now used by food processors and manufacturers in products as diverse as cheesecake, deli meats and pizza. Imperceptible to consumers, they are made up of gummy, sticky substances that inhibit the growth of bacteria, such as starch, cellulose derivatives, chitosan (an indigestible sugar obtained from the carapace of shellfish), alginates (gel-like seaweed substances), fruit puree, milk and soy proteins, egg white and wheat gluten. According to one advocate of this technology, when used on cut fruits, edible films ‘can provide a food with a safe product lifetime of as long as two weeks’. A new edible and cook-able meat coating that promises to extend the shelf life for fresh meat by up to 3 days is being tested. The coating is made from ‘a reliable source of naturally occurring peptide compounds’, and will be transparent, inodorous and unflavoured. One litre of this MeatCoat solution costs €1.53 and is sufficient to coat 13 square metres of meat.

  Edible films are frequently used as carriers for a wide range of artificial additives, such as flavourings and colourings, as well as synthetic preservatives, such as benzoic acid, sorbic acid, propionic acid, lactic acid and nisin. Their presence also slows down the build-up of warmed-over flavour (WOF). Wrapped in edible film, the WOF in a 9-day-old treated pork patty is reduced ‘down to the levels more typically found in a 3-day-old untreated’ one.

  Enzymes, often made using genetic modification techniques, are also creeping into our food chain to extend what the industry refers to as the ‘perceived freshness’ of baked goods. When we see muffins, cupcakes and soft pound cake at a coffee bar or in-store bakery, how fresh do we think they are? I’d guess that most of us would assume a couple of days old, no more. But for all we know, they have been made with an enzyme product, such as XFresh, described by its makers as follows:

  XFresh makes use of enzyme technology to prolong the sensory shelf life and perceived freshness of both pound cakes and smaller cake products like muffins, magdalenas and cupcakes. The technology has proven to be highly effective, extending the sensory shelf life by up to 50%. Consumer tests and professional panels show that applications based on XFresh technology improve the perceived freshness of cakes by up to 50%. In one instance, a four-week-old cake made with XFresh technology was judged to be as fresh as a one-week-old conventional cake.

  So what if your muffin or cupcake isn’t fresh from the oven? Many consumers will be only too delighted if their food keeps for longer, even if they don’t know why. Few of us realise that the cosmetic perfection in chilled food we have come to expect is stage-managed. Under the coy banner of ‘food protection’, manufacturers now have access to various bacteria-slaying, or delaying, shelf-life extenders that are marketed as being more natural than synthetic preservatives. For instance Verdad F41, a white distilled vinegar made from sugar, corn or tapioca, was developed specifically for vacuum packed pork and poultry to help it ‘maintain colour, uniformity, and reduce[s] grey discolouration during shelf life’. ‘Enhanced’ with this preparation, chicken thighs won’t turn that off-putting yellowish-grey colour as they age. Verdad F41 is ‘label friendly’ – it can be described as cultured corn sugar and/or vinegar – which doesn’t raise consumer hackles. But what domestic cook would ‘wash’ chicken in vinegar and then consider it fresh?

  At the cutting edge of shelf life extension lies a new generation of preservative ‘systems’ or ‘solutions’ that combine a number of chemicals refin
ed and isolated from food sources. Food industry chemists are busily exploring the preservative potential of oregano, rosemary, thyme, clove, cinnamon, green tea, mustard, garlic, lactic acid bacteria, lysozyme from egg white, pleurocidin from the skin of a fish, grape seeds, blueberries and cranberries. Natural preservatives already on the market include NaturFORT, promoted as ‘a versatile combination of rosemary and green tea extract that complement each other by providing superior protection of flavour, colour and odour profiles’ in products such as salad dressing and mayonnaise. Fortium, recommended as a shelf-life extender for crisps, is listed as a ‘plant-derived product line based on mixed tocopherols and [unspecified] formulated blends’ that provides ‘extra protection for high stress processing conditions’. (Spuds take a bit of a pounding in the crisp factory.) BioVia™ YM 10, made from cultured dextrose and plant extracts, is marketed as a natural antifungal blend, ‘specially designed to enhance the quality of a wide variety of refrigerated and shelf-stable culinary products’, such as ‘fresh’ salsas and dips. While these preservatives can be presented as natural, what’s natural about putting them in foods that would not otherwise contain them?

  Arguably, these newer, ‘natural’ preservatives are preferable to the old synthetic ones. Do you know anyone who would like to think that their ‘fresh’ fish had been treated with Ecoprol 2002, a clear, light brown, slightly pungent liquid blend of propyl gallate, citric acid, potassium sorbate, orthophosphoric acid, acetic acid, and propylene glycol? The purpose of this six E number cocktail of artificial preservatives is given as follows:

  Mixture of food grade additives aimed to reduce the speed of alteration of natural marine species, allowing longer life. The antimicrobial antioxidant components act as highly effective preservative that extends the shelf life of seafood, especially in the commercialisation [sales] stage, without altering the taste, colour, odour, or texture. The additive components act to provide a protective coating against deterioration of fresh produce by microbial action, oxidation of fats and oils, and body dehydration.