Chemical decay it is of course a complete natural reactions in the food. The best known example is fat becoming rancid. When fat reacts with oxygen, it becomes rancid. This causes a foul smell and taste. It is, in principle, still edible. You won’t get sick. In some cultures rancid fat simply still is eaten. The drying up of bread, the browning of apples or the limp of vegetables are also chemical spoilage. The quality is so bad that it is regarded as inedible and spoiled, but it's often still good to eat.

In pure chemical decay therefore nutrients can be lost and food is less tasty. It is not harmful to health in itself. But chemical spoilage is often associated with microbiological spoilage and that can be very dangerous.

There are thousands and thousands of species to the eye invisible micro - organisms, of which about 10% is harmful to health. Some are even useful or tasty. Think of cheese, yeast, fermented yogurt.

bederfBacteria need except moisture also food. So drying prevents bacterial growth. Making food too sweet, too sour or salt also helps to prevent decay. In an extreme environment, where even bacteria (almost) do not thrive food keeps better: extreme cold (freezing), acid (sauerkraut, pickles ...), sweet (preserve), dry (dry food), alcoholic (Rumtopf), salt (pickling ), oxygen (preserves). Traces of Listeria monocytogenes can become active again, however, after cooking. (Found in raw food, milk, etc., and even just in the ground.) Bacteria in a humid environment at room temperature flourish. Just like us.

Fungi form colonies so you can see that the food is not good. You therefore take them in less than bacteria.

Not all food is equally suitable for storing. Some apple varieties can overwinter, until the summer, others rot away quickly.
In summer and autumn there is usually enough food to harvest. Winter and spring survival is difficult. Techniques and methods to preserve the autumn abundance are therefore vital. Because we are used to get everything all year round all fresh and beautifully packaged in the supermarket, we often absolutely have no (more) feeling for the seasonal supply or storage techniques. Stabbing something in the freezer might just be the maximum effort.
In Central Europe, butter and meat in the summer are wrapped in nettle leaves to keep them longer good.

Corn smut fire (Ustilago maydis) is a fire mold that can affect maize. In Mexico this delicacy is called 'Mexican truffle', or huitlacoche. The affected, unripe flasks are harvested 2 to 3 weeks after infection and then boiled.

In Mugaritz, the highly acclaimed Basque restaurant, you can order a moldy apple for dessert. The gray mold Botrytis cinerea, also known as 'Nobel Rot', contaminates the wine grapes in certain parts of Europe for some years. A 16th-century Hungarian discovered that this created a special taste.

Noble rot affects the skin of grapes and makes them porous. This causes moisture to evaporate from the grape, resulting in an increase in the content of sugars, flavors and aromas.

The renowned Copenhagen world restaurant Noma also had a "rotten apple" on the menu for some time.


Food supplies and store stock

Many perennial life forms have developed mechanisms to overcome periods of food scarcity (winter, drought)or to give their early descendants a suitable ready -made package of food.
Many plants make for themselves or their offspring a supply of food in seeds, tubers and roots.
Bees make winter reserves which we like to take away.
Spiders can pack up and save insects for later.
Shrikes ((Laniidae), butcher birds; songbirds) skewer prey often as living food storage onto a thorn, a unique method in the animal kingdom.
Many rodents store whether or not in combination with hibernation or winter resting their supplies like: squirrel, mice, hamsters! Also mole, beaver, polecat, magpies and jays, act alike.

The yolk of an egg is a food reservoir. He becomes smaller as the chick grows. The egg-white serves as a shock absorbing fluid and as a water reservoir.
Mammals produce milk and suckle their sometimes defenseless babies until they can live sufficiently independent.

Many of these supplies we can take for ourselves, edit, and save them.
Our body can build an own cache.

Winter fat
In the autumn there are many sugar -rich crops and fruits. In winter there is food shortage. Many mammals store for the winter a lot of pounds of fat to pass the cold period, whether or not in combination with hibernating or winter dormancy and winter hair or fur to keep better warm. That is a matter of survival. ( ... Wàs a matter of survival.)

You should thicken about 4% of body weight before and during the winter.
The 'thrifty gene hypothesis’ states that we are genetically programmed to increase our fat stores in autumn to help us survive. Our body maintains its core temperature very tight , even during the winter.

In addition, complex chemical and hormonal processes (insuli, serotoni, melatoni, tryptophan) that are involved also under the influence of light (and day length) determine how much appetite and how many appetite to move or sleep we have.

And in the spring, we are counting on fasting, the 40 days before Easter, to help us to get an acceptable bikini model quickly.

The zeitgeist determines whether thick or thin are 'in'. Once, food shortages were not uncommon, and a fat woman was a sign of prosperity, wealth and fertility.
Prehistoric Venus figurines often have excessive hips, bums and bosoms. Rubens portrayed lush too. Double chin women may have been appreciated since they could successfully complete a scarcity period of 9 months of pregnancy during a famine.

In the intervening periods and cultures it might be slimmer: the ancient Greeks, the constricted waist between 1790 and 1820 to 1850, about boyish emancipated and Marilyn Monroe silhouettes to the tyranny of Twiggy and barbie. Healthy balance and scientific understanding confirm an ancient wisdom : everything in moderation.

(Also other outward signs were often used to show health, fertility or to suggest class distinctions (labouring <> nobility) a white skin, red lips, long nails...)

She looks as slim as a deer or what's such a big gray animal with a trunk called?