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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 27th, 2023

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  • If you read the whole thread, I would not have to spell this out. These are preservatives (source):

    • honey
    • salt
    • garlic
    • sugar
    • ginger
    • sage
    • rosemary
    • sage
    • mustard
    • mustard seed
    • cumin
    • black pepper
    • turmeric
    • cinnamon
    • cardamom
    • cloves
    • vinegar
    • citric acid
    • lemon/lime juice

    They generally work by killing/repelling/deterring microbes that to a notable extent happen to be of the unwanted variety. Before yesterday, I thought salt worked similarly to the others on that list. Yesterday I learnt that salt is uniquely functions as a preservative due to a different mechanism (a drying effect).

    Your logic is nonsense. To claim that because substance X does not kill /everything/, it cannot serve as a preservative – this is broken logic that you brought to the thread. Nothing on that list of food preservatives kills or deters every microbe - not even every harmful microbe. Of course they selectively mitigate /some of/ “the bad bacteria” (but note it’s a bit straw mannish for you to use the article “the” in your phrasing imply /all/ unwanted microbes). Most preservatives mitigate enough unwanted microbes without unacceptable overkill to beneficial microbes to justify use as a preservative. They are selected as preservatives for this reason. Foods that fail to significantly select against unwanted microbes (i.e. most foods) don’t get tagged as a preservative. How are you not grasping this?

    You also have noteworthy bad assumption: that evolution does not happen outside of the ocean. The claim that because life started in the ocean, the ocean is therefore suitable for everything – this is bogus. Try putting a freshwater fish in the ocean. If a complex organism can evolve to become intolerant to the environment of its ancestors, why wouldn’t microbes also evolve to develop intolerances?


  • Indeed, that’s a good point. I wonder how many people don’t know that. I used to think “nothing will survive 250°F in my pressure cooker” and was tempted to cook some questionable pork. But yeah, would have been dangerous because chemical toxins from bacteria output would “survive” (persist) in 250°F. So after some quick research, I tossed it.

    Though I might be surprised if 24hrs is enough time for brine to not only accumulate bacteria in high numbers but also allow enough time for bacteria toxins to be produced. How fast does that happen? I would have thought a day is too short (I don’t think I ever let more than a day pass between boils).