Had a conversation with my wife today about the unopened mayo we had sitting in the pantry and it made me think – how does it make sense for a food (for instance mayo) to sit in a 65-70 degree pantry for months and be perfectly fine, but as soon as it’s opened it needs to be refrigerated. In my mind, if something needs to be refrigerated at any point, wouldn’t it always need to be refrigerated? The seal on the unopened product keeps the item safe, and the refrigerator does that when the seal is off? How do those two things relate?
In: 1789
Way back in the late 1800’s there was a guy named Louis Pasteur. He theorized that foods spoiled by the action of tiny organisms called “bacteria”, and that food could be prevented from spoiling if it were sealed inside a container that would prevent bacteria entering and then all the bacteria inside killed off (usually with heat). The sterile inside of the container then would not have any bacteria to spoil food and it could be preserved for long periods of time, a processed that came to be known as “Pasteurization”. His theories and experiments disproved the previous concept of “Spontaneous generation” where such organisms were supposed to just spring out of materials for no reason, like maggots appearing in rotting foods essentially via magic.
The mayo in your pantry has been sterilized after it was placed inside its container and so there is no bacteria to make it spoil. However the instant you open it the container will be contaminated and you will need to refrigerate it to slow their growth.
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