I understand that ham and preserves are a thing, but bacteria feeds on carbs. Does it only work because you’ve sealed the food in a vacuum?
In: Biology
It acts the same way as salt – it sucks out moisture, which is number 1 thing for mold, yeast and bacteria growth.
In simple words, it keeps food you’re preserving dry so it can’t grow the nasty stuff on it.
Of course, if there’s enough liquid for sugar to disolve, it will feed bacteria.
Sugar acts as a *humectant.* This essentially stabilizes the water content in a food, preventing water from being available for the bacteria to grow in. Sugar itself isn’t inherently an issue when preserving food; the combination of water and sugar is. As long as moisture levels are kept low sugar won’t be an issue.
To understand this, you need to know about osmosis: osmosis means that water will flow from low salt or low sugar regions to high salt/high sugar regions.
When a bacteria cell, which has a low amount of salt/sugar in it, touches something preserved with salt, it’s moisture is drawn out and the bacterium dies from dehydration (same as we humans would if we drank salt water). Preserving with sugar works much the same way.
Latest Answers