[ELI5] How does salt preserve food?
In: Chemistry
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Microorganisms tend to stop “doing their thing” if there isn’t enough water around. To check that this makes sense, simply note that honey and butter, despite being essentially pure sugar (yum yum for bacteria) and pure fat (also yum yum for bacteria), essentially never go bad! This is because there isn’t enough water in them for bacteria to do their thing. Salt removes water by drawing it out of the interior (via “osmosis”) and onto the surface, where it then evaporates.
Rusty microbiologist here. Not getting into details with 5yr olds, but bacteria exchange nutrients with its surroundings through its cell wall. Too much salt damages the cell wall and enters the cell thereby sort of messing up the “liquid” inside the cells and we all know too much of a good thing isn’t good at all. So bacteria go boom boom!
Those talking about leaving wounds open, some wounds are infected by anaerobic bacteria, ie, ones that DONT like air (oxygen in air). So oxygen being poisonous to them, leaving the wound open exposes them and hence help kill em faster.
Osmosis
Basically it draws out the moisture of the food which makes it harder for bacteria to grow and same thing happy to organisms, the salt draws out the “life” out of that bacteria
Salt absorbs moisture, hence why we become dehydrated from eating too much salt, and why it was used to mummify animals and people thousands of years ago
It either creates a salty environment for salt avoiding organisms or it removes water for water loving organisms.
I left a trowel in a bucket of salt and it literally ate through all the metal under the surface of the salt under a year…
Salt’s very good at killing bad things… It’s also good at killing good things. Don’t over salt your meat.. Or yourself.
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