NEW DEHYDRATED FOOD PROCESS

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 5

NEW DEHYDRATED FOOD PROCESS

Supply To N.Z. Party In Antarctic (IV.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, November 30. A new process of food dehydration developed at the Ministry of Agriculture’s experimental factory in Aberdeen will enable a New Zealand Alpine Club expedition to have Scotch beef and lamb chops and chips in the Antarctic next spring, says the “Scotsman.” Already several crates of this specially-prepared canned food have been sent to Sir Edmund Hillary, who is organising the expedition. More than 100 expeditions, including the recent ill-fated women’s expedition to Cho Oyu in the Himalayas, and the Commonwealth transantarctic expedition, have been supplied with various dehydrated foods from the Ministry’s Aberdeen factory, The paper says. When it was learned that Sir Edmund Hillary was organising another expedition, the Fat Stock Marketing Corporation, which supplies the factory with all its meat, presented meat free of charge for processing for members of the expedition.

A spokesman in London said that this new development put Britain ahead of Russia and America in dehydration processes by two years. Describing a processed lamb chop, he said that it was made so light “you can blow it off a table." Quite large cuts of meat can be treated whole with the new method.

Until recently, dehydration was based on drying by warm air and the material to be dried had to be cut - into small pieces or minced. The new process is a c.mbinatson of freezing and vacuum drying. The meat, when cooked, looks as well and tastes exactly like fresh cooked meat.