As the question says, why do we need to refrigerate something after it’s opened? I have a bottle of Chipotle Sauce I got from Target, and it was happily sitting in the shelves for who knows how long unrefrigerated. It says on the label to refrigerate after opening. Why? And I don’t think it’s because Target is air conditioned. Some bodegas in nyc for example are un air-conditioned and will sell similar stuff.
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Two things that make food go bad are oxygen and tiny little living things, we could call them germs.
For a new bottle of sauce that hasn’t been opened, there’s usually only a tiny bit of air at the top and it’s not enough oxygen to make it taste bad.
The germs are usually killed by heating, or, less often, some other method, like radiation or high pressure.
So a bottle is sitting there with almost no oxygen and no living germs – it can last for a long time without going bad.
But as soon as you open the seal, you allow air in and air has oxygen and germs floating around, so the sauce might go bad in a few days. If you put it in the fridge, the cold makes the germs slow down a lot, so they don’t eat up the sauce and they don’t make new germs as fast. There’s still oxygen, but if you put the cap on, that will also slow down.
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