EDIT: Solved! Thanks to everyone who commented.
I’m talking about [this](https://ch-it.openfoodfacts.org/product/4099200059402/huhn-suss-sauer-aldi)
It’s basically a box that was on the shelf, un refrigerated, that contains cooked chicken. How are they able to keep cooked chicken shelf stable for so long?
In: 321
There are several things helping to preserve meals like that.
Before being packaged, the meal is cooked and heated to pasteurize it. It isn’t cooked and then cooled off and then packaged, it’s packaged while it’s still too hot for pathogens to grow and sealed up so no more can get in before it cools.
Once sealed, there is very little oxygen inside. Many dangerous pathogens do not need oxygen (or will die around it) but most of the stuff that will spoil food requires at least a little oxygen to grow. That limits their growth and keeps the food from going bad and growing nasty stuff even though it’s at room temperature. Since it was pasteurized, there’s little chance of anaerobic pathogens getting in that can survive without oxygen.
That doesn’t mean that *nothing* is inside the packaging, just that what manages to survive the heat is probably encysted, meaning it’s inactive and incapable of growing until conditions are better. Conditions will not be better for as long as the container stays sealed.
Many of these kinds of meals require water to be added. Like oxygen, most pathogens require some water to grow. The food is dehydrated enough that most stuff won’t grow and, like oxygen, the seal prevents moisture from getting in through the air.
Many of these meals have additional preservatives that are harmless to humans in the tiny doses found in the foods, but dangerous enough to the pathogens that might try to grow. Again, it probably won’t kill *everything* but it keeps the things from leaving their protective cysts so they can’t reproduce and can’t eat your food (and then poop in it).
Many of these meals have a lot of salt. Salt is a natural preservative because it helps dry out pathogens. Water naturally flows through membranes from areas of low concentration to high concentration: too much salt outside means water will flow out of the cell and into the salty stuff. The extra salt helps preserve the food.
Once you break the seal and open up the package, you’re probably about to cook the food so it doesn’t spend very long sitting around until you pop it into the microwave and heat it back up. That kills whatever pathogens managed to survive until that point. Anything left after that is too weak and too few to do much to your body. Your stomach acid or, failing that, your immune system will take care of anything that actually makes it into your stomach.
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