Pasta has many great things going for it, but the long shelf life is not one of them. If you make pasta at home, you are looking towards a couple of days before it gets bad. Industrial fresh past, which is treated by heat, can go up to a month or two with proper storage, but that is it. But that might change soon.
A team of Italian scientists recently discovered a way to make fresh pasta last longer. If proven sustainable, their findings could bring an extra month of shelf life to pasta.
Fresh Pasta Could Last Longer
According to Frontiers in Microbiology journal, the team did a study in one pasta factory in Altamura that saw them comparing various methods of pasta preservation. One method, which saw the use of different gas rations in MAP (modified atmosphere packaging) and the introduction of probiotics, proved particularly successful. Pasta stored this way had slower bacterial growth and managed to keep its quality for 30 additional days.
Dr. Francesca De Leo, who co-authored the study, said that this new finding would allow people to have pasta available to them at all times while also reducing food waste.
“It is very time-consuming to have to go out to the supermarket to buy more pasta,“ De Leo explained. “Our research could also help avoid food waste through using an innovative technological solution.”
The team will now move forward by doing the analysis of the cost related to the new method before it is considered for widespread use.
