Could I interest you in a package of fully-cooked beef stew that sat unrefrigerated on a shelf for a year before being dropped on your doorstep? Or perhaps a vegetable frittata?
That’s what Amazon might have in store for us — lots of non-refrigerated pre-cooked food.
Amazon is reportedly looking into a process called microwave-assisted thermal sterilization, or MATS. This technology, developed at Washington State University, originated to meet the needs of the U.S. military. The process kills bacteria and seals meals using microwaves, allowing pre-cooked meals to remain safe for up to a year without refrigeration. The meals are easy to transport, and they only need to be heated up a bit before being eaten. As a result, they’re also quite cheap compared to fresh meals.
A Dever-based startup called 915 Labs is shopping the technology to Amazon. According to the startup, MATS has many advantages over other methods of sterilization currently being used in food processing. Traditional processing methods get rid of nutrients and flavor along with the bacteria. MATS allows dishes to be treated in a shorter amount of time, meaning that the dishes retain more of their original texture and flavor.
Amazon could get going on this new venture as soon as 2018. It would give Amazon a stronger foothold in the grocery market, which has long been a goal for the company. Prepared meals are much harder to transport than the millions of other shelf-safe items Amazon sells.
This isn’t the only move Amazon is making to chew up more of the food market. Amazon is also in the process of acquiring the grocery chain Whole Foods, and it already has a grocery delivery program in place called AmazonFresh.
Amazon has not yet confirmed that it will actually end up using microwave-assisted thermal sterilization.
Reuters has also suggested Wal-Mart may be looking into MATS as well. A company called Solve for Food is planning on setting up a MATS facility near Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Arkansas. Wal-Mart has not yet commented.
Featured Image via Wikimedia Commons
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