Pasteurization is a crucial food preservation process that applies mild heat, typically below 100 °C (212 °F), to packaged foods like milk and juices. Its primary purpose is to eliminate harmful pathogens, deactivate spoilage microorganisms and enzymes, and significantly extend shelf life while largely preserving nutritional quality. The process is named after French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, whose groundbreaking research in the 1860s demonstrated that thermal processing could deactivate unwanted microbes in wine.
While Pasteur refined the method, the broader concept of heat preservation has a long history, with instances of heating wine documented in China since AD 1117, and in 1768, Italian scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani proved products could be made sterile through boiling. A major breakthrough occurred in 1810 when Parisian chef Nicolas Appert won a French military prize for his "appertisation" method, which involved preserving food in sealed glass jars and led to the world's first food-bottling factory. Today, pasteurization is integral to the dairy and food processing industries, though non-thermal alternatives like Pascalization (High-Pressure Processing) are also emerging.