Humans have been preserving food for eons. Since before 12,000 B.C. according to archaeological findings. Ancient humans preserved food through sun and wind in temperate climates and through freezing in colder climates. But which are the best food dehydrators available today?
Canning, which is the most common preservation method of our times, is the most modern method of food preservation. We’ll get to some of the various options in this article, including the best rated food dehydrators.[1]https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/food_pres_hist.html
Sun Dried, Wind and Solar Dehydration
As a civilization, we’ve scarcely scratched the surface when it comes to tapping into the power of the sun, that shines 24 hours a day around the globe, and 8-16 hours a day in most of North America. There is much to be discovered over time, including how the sun is utterly self sustaining, generating enough energy for itself and all life in our solar system.
As long as we’re on this planet we’ll have the sun, so the more we can do to make use of that vast energy resource, the better.
Adiabatic is the term for shade drying and occurs without heat. [2]https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/meat/jerky
The Best Food Preservation Methods
There are many options for food preservation. Pickling, canning, dehydrating, freezing and freeze drying all have their advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons.
The best method for preserving the most nutrients for the longest period of time is freeze drying. But each method has it’s pros and cons.
Which Food Preservation Method Lasts the Longest?
The food preservation chart below is very helpful as a general guideline. However, the exact shelf-life of the various methods of preservation is widely disputed.
Why Exact Food Value of Dehydrated Foods is Hard to Pin Down
The .gov sites and resources put out all kinds of documents on food storage, but after perusing a a dozen sources, we didn’t find official data on dehydrated foods.
The reason there is so much conflicting information on this shelf-life topic, is because there are so many variables, including—and especially dependent on—how the food is stored after dehydrating. The other issue is how hard it is to create and maintain a study that lasts for so many years.
In other words, to determine the food value would be to conduct an ongoing study for x number of years, and those are always more expensive and laborious kinds of studies to run, so less common.
Further complicating the research is the question of what determines if the food is good?
Determining Food Nutrient Value
There are three main variables to measure regarding food longevity:
1. What is the nutrient value after x years
2. What is the taste value after x years
3. Is it safe to eat after x years.
Testing at the point of consumption is the only real way to know the nutrient value, and this is done less often than the determination of safety. However it’s fairly well known that heat and cooking destroys many of the nutrients. So it’s a really a deep dive to get to the ultimate truth on all this, and once there, the answer is often, “It depends.”
Bottom line: food prepping is a always a good idea, and properly dried and stored foods can last a long time.
So we started out just researching best food dehydrators, including the sun. and ended up at freeze dryers.
When it comes to preserving food using solar dehydrators, drying racks or the sun, consider your climate and the average daily hours of sunshine. We live in the woods in a humid climate, so we need to use our dehydrator for most drying.
But if you have an area in shade, that’s well aerated, and not humid, air drying in the shade can be a cost and health effective option. Add to that a windy day and your food will dry more quickly because wind plays an important role in food dehydration.
Alternately, you can air dry food on screens in a well ventilated room, and even better if there’s a ceiling fan there.
The best selling dehydrators are electric.
Food Drying Methods
In this article we’ll cover the most popular dehydrators as well as the pros and cons of each:
- Electric dehydrators
- Drying racks
- Sun drying
- Freeze Drying
- Solar dehydration
Many people prefer electric food dehydrators for convenience. First, let’s talk about the disadvantages of electric dehydrators.
What we Use
We used to sun dry as much as possible, for the free and ready availability of sunlight. However, it turns out that sun dried herbs do not retain as much of the nutrients as dehydrators, so we’ve stopped with that.
You can read more on that in our lemon balm article.
When it comes to a food dehydrator, we’ve had a Nesco dehydrator for years. We like it and it works fine. However we’re interested in exploring other options. In particular, we’re interested in being able to dry more foods at one time, and preferably without the countertop machine whirring all day.
NOTE: Our Nesco dehydrator isn’t that loud, however we still prefer not to have that background white noise all day and night. So we’ve settled on a great solution: we have a screened in porch right next to our kitchen, so we’ve placed our dehydrator out there and that eliminates any background noise from the indoor environment, even when we have that porch door open.
Disadvantage to Electric Dehydrators
Electric dehydrators just aren’t that efficient because they run on electricity for several hours per batch, while making a droning fan kind of sound. The Nesco round dehydrator is currently the best seller on Amazon but we got the square shaped Nesco because square shaped machines are easier to store. The square trays also seem to have less wasted and are easier to load with more food more efficiently.
Dehydrated Foods May Take Time and Energy for a Little Yield, but…
