Actually that logic is broken. A preservative need not make life impossible for all organisms. Hops preserve beer to some extent by making life hard for some unwanted organisms. But hops do not kill everything (of course, because you intend to drink the beer). But as I said in my correction, salt works as a preservative through a drying effect, which I did not previously realize.
stom@lemmy.world 7 months ago
So you thought leaving food waste in brine was safe because it would only kill the bad bacteria?
plantteacher@mander.xyz 7 months ago
If you read the whole thread, I would not have to spell this out. These are preservatives (source):
They generally work by killing/repelling/deterring unwanted microbes. Before yesterday, I thought salt worked similarly to the others. Yesterday I learnt that salt exceptional and only functions as a preservative due to a different mechanism (drying effect).
Your logic is nonsense. To claim that because substance X does not kill /everything/, it cannot be a preservative – it’s broken logic. Nothing on that list of food preservatives kills or deters every microbe. Of course they selectively mitigate “the bad bacteria” (but note it’s a bit straw mannish to use the article “the” in your phrasing imply /all/ unwanted microbes; preservatives mitigate enough unwanted microbes to justify use as a preservative).
stom@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Maybe try cleaning your dishes after using them. Whatever you copy paste from articles it seems pretty obvious that leaving out food waste to reuse it is a pretty bad idea.