How Did Nicolas Appert And The Canning Process?

Over two hundred years ago, the French Government gave a challenge to the people of France that is still affecting us today. Napoleon Bonaparte needed someone to invent a way to preserve food longer. A man named Nicolas Appert answered the call, and he invented the canning process. The technique he came up with is still being used today all over the world. Most people agree that Nicolas Appert was born in 1749. He lived in France, in a town called Chalons-Sur-Marne. He had “chestnut brown hair, a large forehead, an oval face with spots of smallpox, blue eyes and a thin nose.” His dad was an innkeeper, and because of this he had no formal education. Nicolas worked as an apprentice at The Palace Royal Hotel in Chalons. He enjoyed experimenting

Before Nicolas Appert invented this idea of preserving food we had no way to keep food from going bad. Many people also probably got sick from eating spoiled food. Even though there was a way to keep food from going bad for a little while it still wasn’t the same. Many people would try to dry the food but it would often taste very different than regular food. Other people would try to salt their food, like different kinds of meat. There were many other ways people tried such as smoking, sugaring, and curing. “Sugar partially masks the taste which is supposed to be preserved. Salt gives an unpleasant acridity, hardens the animal substances which become indigestible and contracts vegetable parenchyma.”. There would be times when sailors would get sick out at sea because they were eating salt cured food which does not have many vitamins, which is why they were getting sick. This sickness was called scurvy. Because of all the things they had to do to the food to preserve it, the food would lose some of the texture and flavor, which is why we should be grateful to Nicolas Appert, that he was able to invent something to preserve our food for a very long time. Now there are many inventions that will help us to preserve our food longer without it spoiling, such as packaged food, and