Heating or Cooking

Cooking can preserve nearly all types of food for a considerable period of time. Raw foods deteriorate through the action of the enzymes they contain and the action of bacteria with which they become contaminated. Heating or cooking destroys or inactivates these enzymes, thus preventing deterioration. Cooking also destroys certain microorganisms that cause spilage. In the home, cooking is used as a perservation method as well as a method to make food more palatable. However the use of cooking or heating to preserve food is not as long lasting as the other methods in that ordinary cooking does not destroy all bacteria. Deterioration, although delayed, will occur through the growth of surviving bacteria.