A theory about smoke and flyes and preserving food Comments Off

Before refrigeration was invented, to preserve food you had to do one of the following:

• dry and smoke the fruit, vegetable or piece of meat;
• salt and smoke it;
• pickle it, somehow;

Although smoking is not always used, it surely is used in many cases. The question is why? Drying and salting is clear. It takes the water out of the food you want to preserve and prevents bacteria from destroying it. But smoke? Besides the taste and smell?

I have a theory about why smoke is and was used, especially when doing the drying in open space, and not in a house or controlled environment: it keeps insects away! Put a piece of meat in the sun to dry and leave it there and you will soon have a ton of flies on it. Eat that, if you dare!

Now, there is one more part to this puzzle. Why is smoke such an effective insect repellant? It’s not deadly, or anything. My theory is this: It’s a defence mechanism. No creature wants to get into a forest fire and burn and die. And where there is fire, there is smoke, so if there is smoke, better turn around and get out of there.

So this is my theory about smoke: it triggers a defence mechanism and because of this effect on insects, it works magic for food preserving