How To Extend The ShelfLife Of Your Food Product

Every year I receive hundreds of calls and emails from food entrepreneurs asking how they can extend the shelf life of their food product. I then ask the entrepreneur a basic question: What is the current shelf life of your product and what dictates its demise? The only way to extend shelf life is to know what the life of your product was to begin with, and what parameters determine when it is no longer sellable. Once this information is known, a food scientist can work with you to determine how to extend the products life on the shelf. This shelf could be ambient temperature or cold storage.

Shelf life is not just about safety- as a matter of fact, it usually is not about safety at all. Most food products that can become unsafe to eat usually were not meant to have any sort of extended shelf life to begin with. Items that should be refrigerated like dairy and meat can become dangerous if left at room temperature for too long and fresh refrigerated items always have a very short and limited shelf life. So when clients ask me how to extend their shelf life they usually are referring to how they can delay the breakdown of their product caused by internal and external forces like spoilage bacteria, air and thermal abuse.

Spoilage bacteria like yeast, mold and lactic acid can usually be controlled by reducing the amount of available water in a system or keeping the product at a cold temperature to slow the microorganism growth- IE lowering moisture and/or reducing water activity allows baked goods to last longer and keeping pasteurized acidified juices refrigerated will slow down microbial growth. The lower the water activity (aW) or the colder the fridge, the longer these products will last. If the fridge is cold enough (or frozen) then the product will possibly never spoil (microbiologically) and if the aW is low enough that energy bar could last on the shelf through a nuclear war or zombie takeover but the quality will take a turn for the worse during that time.

Old energy bars, canned food left over from the 50's, diet coke that has expired. These are all safe to eat but will probably taste terrible. Food that is "shelf stable" may be sterile but the flavors will evolve, fats will become rancid, hard cookies will become soft and soft cookies will become hard. Sugar will crystalize, chocolate chips will bloom and turn white, dry soup mixes will become clumpy. This is where shelf life studies come in and solutions can be defined.

To those entrepreneurs that want to extend the quality of their food product you need to first define your quality parameters, create specifications for the measurable attributes like crunch, texture, rancidity, mold and flavor. Determine how long you want your product to last on the shelf (nothing tastes great forever, eventually it has an end) and then treat each type of deterioration like a symptom that can be cured. IE if product becomes moldy in a week, then perhaps you need to lower your water activity or sell it refrigerated. If your product becomes stale, perhaps you need to use a thicker packaging material or replace the oxygen with nitrogen, or puff up the potato chip bag with extra air so the chips won't get crushed (another quality issue.. broken product).

It is impossible to extend shelf life until your product has been created, tested and has clearly defined attributes that can be treated for deterioration. This process can't be rushed. If you rush it, then you may end up with inferior product on the shelf.