Mr Gus wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:56 pm
I've been slacking in terms of bread products & salad of late, so much so that i've had salad bags go funky (not impressed with myself)
The exception has been luckily my favourite salad mix of spinach & baby pea sprouting salad, which I noted had a use by date of
march the 3rd, I've just eaten it in a few wraps (use up mode)
I would guess "spinach" (probably leaf beet, aka Swiss chard) is quite a tough leaf and relatively decay resistant, and the peas are actually growing big seeds, so they don't have much greenery or water in them to go manky.
With packaging gas (often nitrogen mix) presumably the spinach & pea chemistry reacts favourably beyond many alternates? ..so shouldn't spinach & pea-sprout be more predominant in ALL salad bags to cut down on waste & extend the likelihood of "fresh & edible"?
Anyone with more knowledge power over that of my guesswork please pipe up
I suspect the protective atmosphere vanishes the moment the pack is opened...
Maybe other greenstuff (lettuce) is much more pumped up by nitrate fertiliser, so is much wetter and more prone to decay... putting it in with the spinach/pea mix will just mean the latter being dumped before it has run out of time because of the onset of slimy decay in the packet!
Different veg definitely has differing shelf-lives, maybe inversely correlated with water content? Part-used cabbage heads last weeks and are still useable, they used to be preserved whole in clamps, just a big heap of them covered with straw and then roofed with soil. I suppose it kept most of the air out, but dark and cool seems to be good for storage. For eating apples at Christmas I have seen recommendations to wrap summer apples, put them in biscuit tins (remember them?) and bury them in the garden.
