Freeze-dried

Freeze-dried describes a process that removes water by cold sublimation, where frozen water passes directly to vapour under vacuum, preserving much of the food's structure and many heat-sensitive nutrients. It is often applied to [raw](/glossary/raw) recipes to make them shelf-stable without cooking, giving a lightweight product that is rehydrated or fed dry (manufacturing technology). Because the process avoids high heat, it differs fundamentally from [extrusion](/glossary/extrusion) and even from [air-dried](/glossary/air-dried) formats, which use gentle warmth. One safety nuance is important: freeze-drying removes water but does not reliably kill pathogens the way cooking does, so a freeze-dried raw product can still carry [Salmonella](/glossary/salmonella) or [Listeria](/glossary/listeria) and warrants the same hygiene and [cross-contamination](/glossary/cross-contamination) care as fresh raw food (FDA). The format is energy-dense once water is removed, so portioning must follow feeding guidelines to avoid [overweight](/glossary/overweight). The marker: freeze-dried is a structure-preserving, convenient way to store raw or minimally processed diets, but it is a preservation method, not a sterilisation step, so the raw-feeding cautions still apply. It sits alongside [BARF](/glossary/barf) and [fresh food](/glossary/fresh-food) among the minimally processed options in the [Petipedia glossary](/glossary).

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