What are the important significances of a warm environment for various types of food?

A cold storage is a warehouse that uses cooling facilities to create suitable humidity and low-temperature conditions. In addition to having the storage function of an ordinary warehouse, it can also extend the storage period of stored products. The installation of cold storage is of great significance for food storage in the food industry, especially for the storage of perishable foods.

The installation of food cold storage for food refrigeration is also known as low-temperature storage, which refers to storing food under low-temperature environmental conditions at 0 °C or slightly above the freezing point of food. The significance of a low-temperature environment for various types of food lies in preventing food from spoiling and deteriorating and maintaining the freshness and nutritional value of food by inhibiting the activities of microorganisms and enzymes and reducing the activity in the food matrix.

When food cold storage is used to store animal foods such as poultry, livestock, and fish, the most worrying thing is bacterial contamination during storage, and the rapid reproduction of bacteria causes food spoilage. A low-temperature environment can inhibit the activity and reproduction of microorganisms.

Using a food cold storage can inhibit the reproduction of microorganisms and the exertion of enzyme activity, causing microorganisms to stop reproducing or even die, and enzymes will also lose their catalytic ability or even be destroyed. Usually, when storing animal foods such as poultry, livestock, and fish, they are first processed and cleaned in a low-temperature environment, and then quickly sent to a quick-freezing room (-30 °C) or a quick-freezing tunnel, etc., and then stored in a cold storage room at -18 °C, so that animal foods such as poultry, livestock, and fish can be stored for a long time without spoiling.

The harvest seasons of various fruits are coming one after another, and the number of enterprises and individuals building and using food cold storages is also increasing day by day.

This is also because a low-temperature environment is equally important for the storage of plant foods such as fruits and vegetables. The main reason for the loss and spoilage of fruits and vegetables is the individual's breathing. Although fruits and vegetables cannot continue to grow after being picked, they are still an organism, still have life, and have breathing. The low-temperature environment of the food cold storage is to extend their storage period by inhibiting the breathing of fruits and vegetable foods. Among them, in addition to low temperature, the controlled atmosphere cold storage also uses gas composition control to better inhibit the breathing of fruits and vegetable foods.

However, it should be noted that the low-temperature environment for plant foods such as fruits and vegetables is different from that for animal foods such as poultry, livestock, and fish. Plant foods such as fruits and vegetables cannot be placed in a -30 °C quick-freezing or -18 °C refrigeration temperature, otherwise it will cause physiological diseases of plant foods or even freeze them to death. Therefore, the refrigeration temperature for plant foods should be selected close to their freezing point but without causing the plants to freeze to death.

Based on the above introduction, low-temperature environments are continuously required in environments such as production, transportation, storage, and sales during food circulation.

Low-temperature refrigeration is currently the food storage method with better effects, lower prices, longer fresh-keeping time, and the most widely used.