Advertisement

Bisin: Making fresh food last forever?

A recently discovered natural preservative could change the way we eat.

Our fresh produce might not go bad. Ever. It might not even need refrigeration.

Scientists say that bisin, a naturally occurring preservative produced by harmless bacteria and found in the human gut, attacks “so-called gram-negative bacteria such as E.coli, salmonella and listeria.”

"It seems to be much better than anything which has gone before. It doesn't compromise nutrient quality — we are not adding a chemical, we are adding a natural ingredient,” microbiologist Dan Sullivan told The Sunday Times.

Bisin wouldn’t prevent produce from rotting altogether, but would alter the way things decompose as it prevents bacteria from growing. Scientists claim it can significantly extend the lives of dairy products, meat, eggs, and even open bottles of wine and salad dressing.

[See also: Cooking with food scraps]


Bisin is related (chemically) to nisin, which is used to keep processed cheese edible for decades. The all-natural bisin doesn’t need to be pharmaceutically tested and could be on the market as soon as next year, Fox News reports.

The benefit of this discovery is two-fold: it would decrease instances of food poisoning and it would reduce the amount of food waste — a statistic currently quite staggering. (In Toronto alone, 17.5 million kilograms of food is thrown out each month.)

If fruits and veggies can stay fresh for months instead of days — with no nutritional drawbacks — bisin just might be the healthy-stockpiling solution previously not available for busy families and the stay-fresh solution for single foodies who can’t eat their produce quickly enough.

More from Shine on Yahoo! Canada

World's most expensive cooking pot

Chef's guide to cooking fish

Bad cooking habits you should break