How refrigeration changed our food
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
When the article was written, it turned 110: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOMELRE
I somewhat follow the vintage refrigeration community (owning a mid-30s Frigidaire myself) and still believe this is the only one of them known to be in existence today: https://www.coolingpost.com/features/ashrae-displays-first-e...
Growing up in my fathers shop we had a 30's Frigidaire as well. One summer day it was outside getting defrosted and washed when an employee decides to be helpful and chip the ice with a screwdriver. Yes, he punctured the coils. What a scene, I was there and saw the pop, my grandfather sees it through the door and comes flying out screaming, then my father comes out and it turns into a scene (guy wasn't fired but got an ear full.) My grandfather silver soldered the aluminum coil but the few technicians they called didn't want to or know how to charge it. So it went to the scrap guy. I was just a kid but if I were older I would have pushed to get it fixed.
The icebox was kept in a carpeted room and it was used for dry storage. We never put ice in it. And it was definitely called "the icebox". But also, Grandma referred to the refrigerator as "the icebox" as well, and we always knew what she meant, because she'd typically say "put that milk in the icebox" or whatever to refrigerate the stuff.
Grandma had the best kitchen with the most fascinating appliances and gadgets. She had a flour sifter, an eggbeater or two, an actual breadbox (have you ever heard the question, "is it bigger than a breadbox?"). Our other grandparents were the first ones on the block to purchase a microwave oven. They hoisted it on top of the refrigerator and we could barely reach into it! My cousin said not to look into the microwave while it was cooking because it'd cook our eyeballs!
My father's parents had a late-40s or early-50s refrigerator in the kitchen well into the late-90s. It had an actual levered latch to hold it shut, and a small freezer section up in the top. Especially as a child, I had to just about body-slam the door to get it to latch. That was the "icebox". They also had a more-modern fridge and chest freezer in the basement. Honestly, I don't remember how they differentiated them, vocabulary-wise.
There was an actual Radar Range microwave, although I don't know the vintage. Old enough for a mechanical timer and a bell to ring when it was done.
Grandma was a home baker (especially cookies at Christmas), so she certainly had all the classic equipment, hand and electric egg-beaters, flour sifters, breadbox...yep.
It’s gotten better over the years as consumer awareness has grown but now there’s the trend of making fruit increasingly sweet like cosmic crisp apples, sumo mandarins, or cotton candy grapes.
Then you can sort all the oranges by sweetness, and sell the sweet ones to one place and the pretty ones to another.
Where the consumer only sees the looks in the shop, why send that country the nice tasting ones?
Try an aubergine in Germany, and then try one in Sicily. The difference is stark.
My biggest annoyance is ordering a BLT in August and getting a green artificially ripened tomato even though ripe and flavorful ones can be found everywhere. You would think that CSAs would be a lot more popular and successful then they are but the reason (imo) is that most people really don't want to cook and even if they do, they don't want to do that every day so the CSA shares end up overwhelming them with fresh supplies that get given away or thrown out instead.
The logistics between growers to distributors to store and customers add a ton of cost to your food. In the order of 200%.
The reliance on external food sources for many ingredients exacerbates this even more.
Many business models in other countries are based on lowering logistics, doing basically grower-to-customer directly and evading all the middlemen. No refrigeration, better quality, cheaper food.
The mom came to visit her daughter during COVID and while eating something bought from the local supermarket, she noticed that the food has a very weak taste if any at all. COVID was said to impact one's sense of taste or smell. So, upon returning to France, she went to take a test and... she didn't have COVID. In fact was completely healthy :)
I went to France last summer. And... truth be told, I don't taste the difference between Dutch vegetables and French vegetables. To me they are both fine. The bread on the other hand is on a completely different level.
Anyways. I don't really know what may be causing these perceived differences in taste. But, I have a theory that it's a learned thing. Maybe our sensors adapt to a particular food and then a very small change overall can affect them in a major way?
I sincerely doubt that the chilled stock in a local Irish supermarket makes my food options LESS diverse than they were a century ago. Grapes, blueberries, strawberries everywhere at any time of year, frozen fish from halfway around the planet, frozen pizzas, even ice cream for God's sake. Perhaps the cucumbers are worse, but I can always get them, and don't have to suffer the Hungry Gap in winter on nothing but potatoes, nettles, cabbage, pickles, and grain.
> American households open the fridge door an average of 107 times a day
This also beggars belief.
If TV/film/YouTube is anything to go by the habit of leaving the door open for extended periods is common too. That one really grinds my gears. I just can't understand a brain that doesn't tell you to minimise the amount of time the door is open. It's one of those things that makes me realise how fundamentally different people can be.
I can actually top this, though. In my student days I had a guy from a hot country move in. Apparently the water from the tap was too cold so he would warm it in the kettle. The trouble is the kettle is too hot... So I watched in utter disbelief as he boiled the kettle, poured boiling water into a pint glass, then carried said glass to the fridge to cool it back down to drinking temperature!
Later I came back and he'd forgotten about the water so it was now colder than tap water in the fridge.
It's the stuff in the fridge that takes the initial work, repeatedly exchanging the air is maybe a rounding error?
While "camping coolers" just keep the cold air inside.
My fridge doesn't cool when the door is opened, not even sure if slightly longer opening times make a huge difference when the complete air is exchanged in seconds anyway.
You can probably chart this and calculate an optimum.
From reading various articles, apparently there really was greater diversity in vegetables, too. Nowadays people eat tomatoes, salad, onions, perhaps carots, and that's about it but there are many, many more that can be locally grown and that have almost disappeared from many people's diets. If you mention swedes, turnips, cabbage, beetroots, leeks, rhubarb, types of squash, etc. even cauliflowers to many people they won't be able to tell you when was the last time they ate or touched one. The only time people touch a pumpkin is at Halloween and they don't eat them.
Regarding meat, offal has almost completely disappeared, and I suspect seafood is now mostly processed fish from one or two species only.
Perhaps this is a U.S. issue. Every single one of these is available at my local Lidl supermarket (~a marginally upscale Aldi for those outside Europe) for much of the year, not to mention other more starkly seasonal things that filter in like peaches, salsify, runner beans, cherimoya (a tropical fruit), and so on. Across Europe I've had no trouble getting all the offal I'd want: head cheese/zult, haggis, black pudding, balkenbrij, hearts, various horrors suspended in aspic-- in supermarkets. Not specialist shops, not the butcher. I'm in rural Ireland now, but the selection was better yet when I lived in Switzerland and NL and also shopped at Lidl.
Many of them tend to be available in supermarkets, though it varies by location, but, really it's only older people who buy them.
That said, coming from the continent myself, the UK is below average. For an island the general lack of a variety of seafood is especially stricking.
The real problem being not how the veggies are stored on their way to us, but how they're grown industrially?
Just regular stuff like potatoes, carrots, celery root, parsnip and such.
Now when I got them I was very busy, so they sat in a cool and dark place for a couple of weeks before I had time to use them.
First thing I did was make a simple vegetable soup using only the vegetables I got from her, and it completely blew me away with the flavors.
I enjoy food and making food, and that soup was one of the best dishes I've ever tasted. Each spoonful was a feast.
I told my friend this, and she replied that she had noticed it right away herself, and like me was taken aback by how stark the difference was to what was in the grocercy stores.
I've made soups and stews with fresh and frozen vegetables, but nothing has come close to those homegrown ones.
In fact nowadays I use it to form a mental image on the enthusiasm that today's kids have for reading (and unfortunately mine is no exception). I read a ton as a kid and still read now but my kid wouldn't touch it with a barge pole unless forced to. Never saw him pick up a book on his own volition, that is.
But I imagine it's the same situation as me with tending the garden. Never, not once, did I go to my father and say "dad, gimme the hoe coze I wanna start hoeing the weeds between the tomatoes".
Bottom line, I'd take supermarket vegetables anytime to growing myself. It's just not for me :)
My daughter didn't like to read too, until I bought her a book from Monster High universe (the hot topic for small girls at the time). She was hooked and now buys her own books from allowance.
Gave me a newfound appreciation for how much work growing crops is.
I'm vegetarian and I've noticed there's an assumption made by many people that vegetarian or vegan food comes with sacrifice and is somehow lacking in pleasure. I can only assume this is because they have only tasted cheap supermarket vegetables or maybe just don't know how to prepare and cook them. I became vegetarian for ethical reasons but I stay for the flavour. I could never go back.
It's no surprise to me that the top vegetarian countries in the world (by percentage of population) have historically been countries like India, Mexico, Italy. All countries with long growing seasons. In India (again, historically, things are changing everywhere), they basically didn't even store food. Vegetables were harvested and eaten right away. Can't get fresher than that.
As with everything, though, you have to choose what to do with your life. Growing vegetables takes time (and money). Given the choice I think most people would opt to buy their vegetables from someone else so they have time to do other things. The problem comes when the quality of those veggies is slowly eroded over time in pursuit of profits. This problem isn't exclusive to vegetables, though.
Too bad local farming is not scalable.
Around me there are a lot of those community gardens. It's encouraged by the city, and you can rent a piece of land for yourself.
https://www.lebendige-traditionen.ch/tradition/en/home/tradi...
(with that said, I grew up on a "farm", and as a child had to do a lot of gardening. I understand your enthusiasm about the flavors, but oh heck no, I'll eat the tasteless food for now and happy to not having to deal with all the work in the gardens :) )
Farming for quality is a luxury activity.
We don’t save any money this way but we eat better and feel more self sufficient.
This year will be my first crop of sweet corn :)
The general problem is with "fresh" as it is specifically optimized for the time spent in the cold chain. Produce has less water as that would bruise. Stuff is picked while unripe and then "ripened" in warehouses. Characteristics that cause degradation are bred out (like the enzymes in roses that give you the scent that is the defining characteristic of a goddamn rose). etc.
And, you are quite correct that the overarching problem is the consolidation of the food chain into a small number of giant "agribusiness" entities.
Bananas, for example, are practically a miracle fruit for scalable production and distribution. They are incredibly consistent - have resilient skins, have lots of structure that prevents damage from packing, come in easily managed bunches, and (if temperature controlled) the ripening process can begin on demand at point of delivery.
And a replacement species is not available.
There are many varieties of bananas still grown in SE Asia, the original home of the banana. If somehow Cavendish is wiped out totally, it's not too difficult to pick another cultivar, breed resiliensy to it, and restart the whole banana industry.
The place burned down a few years later, anyway; they stacked up pallets as high as the factory itself right next to it, iirc someone lit it.
The same process makes certain things difficult or impossible because the frozen fruits and vegetables will fall apart (quickly) when cooked.
Also, I will prefer frozen spinach to fresh any day because it takes less time to cook (you can measure enough of it right away into the pan instead of adding incrementally and waiting for it to whittle and cook down).
Also, I think all these compliments to fresh locally picked food vs the plainest cheap stuff from the supermarket exaggerate the difference... a lot. Sometimes there's indeed a noticeable difference because a particular sort of fruit or veg aren't grown industrially (eg. there are plenty of sorts of potatoes but in a supermarket you will find maybe two, which are probably the most resilient to pests). But if you were to grow the same sort of potato you buy from supermarket, I'm pretty sure the difference would be so small as not to be noticeable at all.
That said, this advantage gets completely undone if the frozen food is left in a pallet waiting to get into another freezer. the subsequent refreeze will introduce the very ice damage the original process was trying to avoid. you can certainly take steps to minimize thaw on the way to your freezer but you don't know if the entire supply chain was so judicious.
Ripe tomatoes are more delicate than underdeveloped, still green tomatoes. So pick them before done developing, ship them, and they'll turn red in the weeks it takes to get to the store.
And if they are picked ripe, they'll also go bad before they even get to shelf via their weeks long boat journey.
That's why local is better, and your own garden better still.
There is also a factor that some types of foods will degrade within hours to some extent of being picked- Herbs I pick out of my garden like thyme and rosemary are extremely fragrant when picked, even a few hours later they are noticeably less so. I think many consumers have picked up on this, over the last decade or so I have noticed the fresh plants section of the grocery store expanding, while the "cut and plastic boxed" section of the store shrinking. I am in an urban area, most people don't have outdoor space (I didn't for many years), and I had difficulty keeping those plants alive when attempting to keep them going on my windowsill with a western exposure.
I grow beans in my garden. French beans and broad beans are quite good frozen, perhaps amongst the vegetables that tolerate the freezer the most. Very happy to have those out of season. But there is no comparison possible with the fresh stuff.
The point of fresh to me is to have it come from closer sources, even if it's in a worse shape, and be consumed basically in a day or two.
For anyone caring enough, getting access to local(ish) fresh food can be a pretty good indicator of a nice place to live, and it's usually worth the tradeoffs.
But I have no problem with grabbing a bag of frozen veggie mix to make borsch.
It's proposed that our gut biomes desperately miss those days.
Frozen vegetables are less nutrient rich compared to fresh vegetables, because they lose nutrients while being frozen. And to be honest, frozen vegetables are frozen in the first place because those vegetables would have gone to waste otherwise.
So not only is their original state already compromised, they're then even more so when they're frozen.
Furthermore, if a produce purchaser is going to freeze, they freeze as soon as they possibly can to limit any spoilage or degradation, which hurts their overall profit. Frozen fruits and vegetables have typically retained their nutrition much better than "fresh" ones that were shipped from out of state.
Tomatoes can improve substantially if left without refrigeration, it's one of those fruits that continues to ripen after being picked.
The cold degrades some molecules involved in the flavour of the fruit.
Yup. Turns out, the varieties that do best in climate controlled greenhouses aren't the ones that have much going on in terms of flavor.
Thankfully at least in Germany there still are farmers' markets, and in Croatia any small town will have a daily one - and the difference is night and day, even compared to German farmers.
Obviously there's exceptions for stuff that's out of season or doesn't even grow in the country - but they do a darn well job at ensuring everyone plays by the rules.