With today’s recession looming ever longer and no real end in sight, family’s food budgets are stretched to the max. We are all looking for cheaper sources for healthy food. The problem is, cheap and healthy are two goals that just do not seem to fit together in the marketplace, until now…enter stage right…the food dehydrator. Food dehydration has been around in one form or another for centuries. Due to the world wide economic meltdown food dehydrators are once again gaining popularity. The reasons vary from economics to a family friendly activity.

Let’s say that for one reason or another you have come across a large amount of fruits or veggies. Maybe you have an overabundance from your backyard garden or a local farmer is offering a great deal for u-pick produce. Either way, you find yourself with way too much of a spoilable commodity. For a small, one time investment in a kitchen food dehydrator you can take all of this produce, dehydrate and store it indefinitely for a fraction of the cost of freezing. According to experts from Brigham Young University’s Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science, food that is dehydrated and stored properly can last up to 30 years.

A Dehydrator can do all of this while at the same time maintaining virtually all of the nutrient and fiber value. Your kitchen dehydrator will do this by removing 75% of the moisture from the produce. Freezing is an option but as you may know, not all produce freezes efficiently. Freezing these same fruits or veggies may be wrought with problems such as…sure you can freeze it but will it be edible when thawed? With food dehydration, anything is a possible candidate and most dehydrator enthusiasts will agree that once eaten the dehydrated foods literally explode with vibrant flavor in your mouth.

Once again, economic times have forced families to find alternative activities and entertainment. Theme parks and vacations have taken a back seat to family nights and “stay”cations. Parents are actively seeking fun, entertaining and educational activities to stay connected to their kids and hopefully teach them something in between. What better way to keep your kids engaged and interested in the world around them than to teach them how they can use the food dehydrator to make great tasting fruit leather rolls. Or also, how they can make their own dehydrated snack foods for that big family hike on the weekends. Your food dehydrator can become a valuable tool for bringing families together using a fun, safe and educational teaching tool.

Whether you are using it as an economic way to stretch the tightening food budget or as a way to make lasting family memories your food dehydrator may just be the wisest investment you will ever make.

Stay tuned for future articles where we will talk about how to choose just the right food dehydrator for you and your family's needs. From box units to cylindrical column machines we will sort through and make sense of all the choices. In more upcoming articles we will also discuss the benefits, controversies and uses of health and wellness kitchen machines such as juicers, yogurt makers, blenders and even ice cream makers.

   Food dehydration or food drying for preserving purposes has been around in one way or another for centuries if not millennia. Until the last hundred years the food drying process has been relegated to finding a flat, dry surface that happens to be in direct sunlight. You can only imagine the hazards involved with this outdoor process ranging from bug infestation to inclement weather. Fast forward around a hundred years later and what you have got in today’s marketplace is a healthy diversity of self contained, electronic food dryers or dehydrators. As you might guess, they are not all created equal and vary widely. This article is one of several that will walk you through some of these differences.
Most modern food dehydrators can vary in shape from cylindrical columns with layers of trays to horizontal boxes with adjustable trays. These Dehydrator units all have their good points and not so good points. Let’s talk about some of the more controversial elements of both vertical and horizontal food dehydrators.
Air Flow
   A food dehydrator works best when the airflow is moving un-impeded from one end of the unit to the other end. This air flow can be vertical or in other words…up, that is originating from a heat source at the bottom of the dehydrator and flowing up as in fan driven or convection (hot air will always rise). The other air flow alternative would be a horizontal dehydration unit. This is where the air begins movement from a fan and heat source at one side of the unit and moves horizontally across the food trays, once again in an un-impeded or un-blocked manner. Now of course, the million dollar question, which one is best, a vertical flow cylindrical unit or a horizontal flow box unit? When you are standing out on an open plane and feel the wind blowing against you, how is the wind blowing? Of course it is blowing horizontally. Most food dehydration experts agree that the horizontal air flow or box unit is the best. The horizontal air flow throughout the box is the same whether you place the food slices in the back or the front. In most vertical or stackable dehydrators the air flow is best near the bottom and become less effective near the top. This requires you to be more aggressive in switching out the tray placement for more even drying of your food slices.
Food Odor mixing
    The word marriage stirs images of a bliss full blending of the essence of two individuals into one. In the world of food dehydration it is a consequence that you will want to avoid at all costs. With today’s food dehydrators you can conceivably dry a wide variety of foods all at the same time within the same dehydrator. However the mixing or marriage of essences (tastes) and odors will always be an issue. With the horizontal or box dehydrator the air flow keeps the odors relatively contained within that immediate tray area. While the vertical or cylinder dehydrator will need to have more frequent tray changes or positioning to avoid this air flow mixing. Either way, both types will work well for a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. You just need to be a bit more aggressive in maintaining even air flow with the cylinder unit. Both types of dehydrators work well for drying meat into jerky but be aware, it is recommended that meat be done at a whole separate time than the soft and more fleshy fruits and vegetables. If you do meat dehydration then unit cleaning takes on a very important purpose.
Cleaning
   Proper and regular cleaning of any piece of kitchen equipment is an essential and inevitable chore that will always be needed. Food dehydrators are no exception. The great thing is, these units are very easy to clean and when done properly should never get too dirty in the first place. All of the trays are porous, hand washable plastic and should not require any cleaning solvent other than soap and water. As bits and pieces fall down into the bottom of your dehydrator unit just a quick scoop with a damp rag should usually do the trick. If your heating element is exposed, make sure that all bits and pieces of food debris are removed from this area. If you are using wax dehydrator sheets on your trays always discard the sheet after every use and line the tray with a fresh dryer sheet. After drying meat always wash thoroughly with soap and water every area where the meat may have made contact. This will insure that no cross contamination will happen within your dehydrator and increase the years of use and enjoyment from your unit.
   While there are some minor differences between the different styles of today’s food dehydrators, they should give you and your family many years of healthy foods. Whether you are dehydrating fresh fruits, veggies, herbs or meats today’s modern food dehydrators, with a little maintenance should last for many years.

This title may seem like a stretch of the imagination and at the very least a gross over statement but you will have to admit that today’s family is being challenged from a variety of angles. Not the least of these angles would simply be quality time spent together. Family budgets are stretched the max. School and school activities are taking increasing amounts of valuable family time. Mom and Dad have to work more hours in the day just to make ends meet and the family sit down dinner is a concept that seems to have disappeared with the Cleavers. With all of these challenges and more happening every day to America’s families what is a parent to do? This may sound incredibly simplistic but here is one answer to this dilemma…purchase a food dehydrator.

ORIGINS

Never before in our country’s history have our children been so far removed from the origins of their food. A recent poll showed that more than 87% of today’s urban, American school children have never set foot on a farm. When asked where there milk came from over half of the kids polled said “the supermarket”. You will have to admit this is the rather pathetic outcome of our modern, urban, socio-economic family state. A home, kitchen food dehydrator can be an easy to use and very effective catalyst in this education gap. With a food dehydrator kids can have a literal, safe, hands-on experience with their food. This experience can undoubtedly open up a variety of other avenues to educate them about that specific food source that you may be working with. Food dehydration can be an inexpensive, visual in home or in classroom lesson on where our foods come from, how we get them and even how they, the kids themselves can prepare and eat them. By the way, the nutritional values of these foods that can be dried in a food dehydrator are without question far superior to much of the foods you will find in your supermarket. The various foods that can be dried in a modern food dehydrator range from fruits and vegetables to many different meat varieties.

TRANSFORMATIONS

Remember when we were kids and we played with our easy bake ovens or our creepy crawly ovens. We didn’t know it at the time but (maybe our parents did) we were learning to take a simple basic ingredient and transform it into an actual edible muffin or spider. These may have lacked nutritional quality and taste appeal but we didn’t care…we were creating and it was fun. This was an experience that we could share with our parents or the neighbor kids living around us. A food dehydrator can be a continuation of that experience. If you are fortunate enough to have a back yard garden, just think how satisfying it could be for you and your kids to take some of those garden goodies that they may have actually planted and turn them into great tasting snacks. You really don’t have to have a garden to experience this. Even if you have one tomato vine or a single mint plant growing somewhere around the house you can use your food dehydrator to transform this into a delicious, nutritious eating experience. Family time doesn’t have to be about trips to the mall or expensive theme parks. Quality family time, that is, the stuff your kids or grandkids will remember forever can be nothing more than creating tasty, nutritious memories with the help of your food dehydrator. These food dehydrators take up a minimal amount of kitchen counter space. They run at very low heat from 85 to 145 degrees therefore creating a very safe and low wattage cooking environment. Food prep may be as little as slicing the veggie or meat you are about to dehydrate and clean up can take no more than a minute or two.

GIVING BACK

One of the biggest complaints (if you could call it that) from back yard gardeners is that there is just too much. The bounty of their garden is more than they could ever eat themselves. This abundance is not unusual. It is more often than not, the norm. Once again, as a teaching tool for families and classrooms the food dehydrator could be used as a teaching catalyst to teach your kids how to give back to the less fortunate of society. Take a small portion of that garden’s abundance, from tomato slices to kale leaves (which can be dried into a delicious salted, crispy chip) and from apple slices to green pepper rings. All of these can be quickly, easily and cheaply dehydrated, put into a zip lock bag and given to your local Salvation Army or church food kitchen. This family teaching tool and giving experience can be priceless. Not to mention the appreciation and thankfulness of the organization you donate your box of healthy, dehydrated foods to.

Today’s modern family is facing a myriad of difficult obstacles which are forcing family members to spend more time apart. It is becoming much harder for our children to experience meaningful, creative, safe and inexpensive food cycle education. A food dehydrator just may be your most effective and wisest kitchen equipment purchase you could ever make. For the amount of money you will spend (most quality dehydrators are selling for between $100 to $175 dollars) the experiences and memories made can be priceless.

How do you feed a world that is becoming increasingly hungry? This is not a new question and one that according to the Food Preservation Team from the Department of Nutritional Science at the University of Missouri has been plaguing food engineers for decades if not centuries. According to their research achieving this grand goal cheaply and efficiently on a global scale is the challenge. Food preservation through dehydration may hold the key to feeding masses of hungry people. While the future of food dehydration may be stellar, its history over the last several centuries may hold some surprises.

Food drying or dehydrating is believed to be one of the oldest methods of food preservation throughout human history. It allowed hunter-gatherer societies to successfully travel, explore and hunt for different food sources. The development of agriculture was the single, major factor that made it possible for mankind to settle in permanent communities and transition from hunter-gatherer nomadic tribes. How to save or preserve these foods for a later date is a whole separate study. Research has showed that the first ancient stable, settled, civilization arose in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Middle East. The uncovering of dried fruits, grains and dried, salt preserved fish and meat are traced back to over seven thousand years to these first ancient civilizations. Farming eliminated the constant need to search for food and allowed populations to grow through the production of a more stable food source. There are neither volumes of recorded history nor any one source of collected material on food dehydration. However very recent Middle Eastern archeological digs have un-earthed food samples which research determined to have been dried foods originating in ancient Jericho over 4000 years ago. In addition, Old Testament Biblical scholars have been able to isolate bits and pieces of scripture which mention the preservation methods of sun-drying and smoking foods over a hot fire as a means of feeding their people.

For centuries, much of the European diet depended on dried cod, known as salt cod or bacalhau (with salt) or stockfish (without). It formed the main protein source for the slaves on the West Indian plantations and was major economic force within the trade routes of the day. The next mention of food drying doesn’t emerge again until around 1630. At about this time in history a band of French mavericks began appearing up and down the Yucatan peninsula and Caribbean islands. They were known as the buccaneers. The term buccaneer was actually derived from the Caribbean Arawak word buccan which is referencing a wooden frame for smoking meat. The meat of preference at the time was the plentiful, slow moving manatee or sea cow. From this became derived in French the word boucane and hence the name boucanier for French hunters who used their wooden frames to smoke meat from feral cattle and pigs on Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). History of course tells us the rest of the story about the buccaneers. English settlers occupying Jamaica began to spread the name buccaneers with the meaning of ruthless pirates when in reality it was referring to their ability to dry meat. The name became universally adopted later in 1684 when the first English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin’s book The Buccaneers of America was published.

Along with an amazingly colorful history which includes ancient roots and ruthless piracy, food dehydration is even today on the forefront of cutting edge food engineering and preservation. Today’s food dehydrator is a surprisingly simple capsule of modern technology and historical know how. Today’s typical kitchen food dehydrator has electronically generated air flow along with micro-processor governed temperature control. In place of the wood frame on the beach is an amazingly compact, ergonomically designed piece of history that fits snuggly on a kitchen counter. With multiple level trays, even air flow and constant temperature control a person can dehydrate a large volume of fresh fruits, veggies and meats literally over night. The simplicity, efficiency and very low cost of the modern food dehydrator is once again taking center stage in the complex world of food preservation and engineering. Developing nations and countries that have endured natural disasters are re-discovering the practicalities of food dehydration to feed their hungry masses. The buccaneers of yester-year had no idea how their simple practice of meat drying on the beach would become a modern means of feeding a hungry world.

With today’s seemingly instant availability of food and with literally every modern home having a refrigerator and freezer for food storage, you may ask “who needs a food dehydrator?”  You might say, “If I can dash up to the local grocery store at a moment’s notice and get all of my fruits, veggies, meats etc., why would I ever need to a food dehydrator to preserve my food?”  My knee jerk response to this mentality is “who wouldn’t want a food dehydrator?”  A modern food dehydrator can be one of the most versatile and wisest health and wellness equipment purchases you could make.  But, it is a fair question…just who does need a food dehydrator?  Lest talk about that for just a bit.

Garden Family

I absolutely believe, without a doubt that any family of two or more people who have any size of a vegetable garden should have a kitchen food dehydrator.  If you have had any experience with a garden at any time of your life you know that the abundance of your harvest is always far more than your original planting.  The planting of one tomato plant can reap a dozen or more tomatoes.  Your family’s ability to eat all of your gardens harvest abundance is probably pretty slim.  With a food dehydrator you have the ability preserve this produce for your family’s enjoyment over the next several months.  Granted, your neighbors probably won’t like you owning this dehydrator since they won’t be getting near as much free goodies out of your garden.  

Teacher

Today’s average American student has never before in our nation’s history been so far removed from the origins of our food supply.  As a teaching tool, a food dehydrator in the classroom just makes so much sense.  It will provide your students with visual and real time, hands-on experience with their raw food.  For a child to take a strawberry that was picked from a classroom garden plot, dehydrate it and then have it explode with taste in their mouth is an absolutely priceless teachable moment. Whether it is related to history, science or home economics the practical uses of a classroom food dehydrator can be one of the most effective and versatile teaching tools in your classroom.

Outdoorsman    

A hunter’s best friend may be more than just his trusty hunting dog.  Today’s hunter needs an additional best friend in the form of an equally trusty food dehydrator.  After a successful hunting excursion a hunter needs an effective and timely way to preserve the fresh meat.  To turn this meat into a tasty, seasoned piece of jerky can be the gastronomical highlight of the trip.  A food dehydrator at the camp site or lodge will be one of the most heavily used pieces of camping equipment.  Speaking of camping, whether you are a weekend camper, hiker or hardcore survivalist, what could be more needed than an inexpensive supply of healthy, finger food and snacks to eat on the trail or at the campsite?  A food dehydrator will provide you with that healthy blast of good carbohydrates and proteins that your body will crave during these physically demanding events.  These dried snacks will not require any form of preparation or elaborate preservation and will be extremely light weight and easy to pack.  The eating of these snacks will not require any additional food preparation.  Dehydrated food can literally be a highly nutritional power snacks that can fit in your backpack or pocket.

Church

Food engineers have said that food dehydration may be one of the most effective forms of cost efficient food preservation techniques.  Churches with a theological belief system based on end times survival or feeding impoverished world populations have listened very carefully to this research.  Amassing a home or community storehouse of well preserved foods with the use of a home food dehydrator is front and center in many families spiritual and family lives.  Other missionary families are recognizing the efficiency of a food dehydrator and incorporating it into the feeding of their indigenous followers.  These are populations who may be suffering from lack of food due to famine, natural disaster or war torn atrocities.  A food dehydrator is being recognized as the catalyst that can not only meet religious requirements but allow one person to effectively feed a multitude with healthy, preserved, nutritious food.

So, here is the question.  Do you see yourself in any of these examples?  Are you in a family of two or more folks who have any size garden?  Are you a teacher or a member of a school system that is searching for creative, cheap and effective teaching tools?  Are you an outdoor lover that needs that healthy, finger food snack?  Are you the member of a church that requires you to preserve at least a year’s worth of food?  Does your church support a missionary in the field who is trying to effectively feed the surrounding people in order to spread the message?  If you see yourself in any of these examples then YOU are the one who needs a food dehydrator.  From about $50.00 to $250.00 your one time purchase of a modern home food dehydrator will last for years.  You food dehydrator will provide you years of service and quickly become that piece of kitchen equipment that you will wonder how you ever lived without.