7 ms·

How refrigeration changed our food

76 points by whocansay 2y ago

whocansay 2y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240804172211/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-nicola-twilley.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240804172211/https://www.nytim... https://archive.ph/GNKiL https://archive.ph/GNKiL
gnabgib 2y ago
(2024) Related: Remembering the First 'Cold-Storage Banquet' (33 points, 8 months ago, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41150879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41150879
nottorp 2y ago
Hmm isn't frozen food - even veggies - very close in content to fresh food? The real problem being not how the veggies are stored on their way to us, but how they're grown industrially?
- bsder 2y ago
  Yeah, frozen is pretty good and quite often better nutritionally as it is more ripe than the "fresh" stuff since it doesn't have to be cosmetically appealing or to stay "fresh" while going on the trip through the cold chain. 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.
  - reedf1 2y ago
    Yes exactly - and more broadly pretty much all food consumed globally is automatically selected by tolerance of storage + packaging + shipping. Many varietals and whole specimens have been lost to the annals of history because they cannot make it to a Walmart in North America from Mato Grosso in a scalable (and profitable) way. 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.
    - chii 2y ago
      And thus, this monoculture became susceptible to a single fungal plague that is killing the plantation! And a replacement species is not available.
      - chabska 2y ago
        > 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.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  I've worked in a "fresh" vegetable packing factory once... I'll go with frozen food. Stuff like broccoli came in from the fields in crates on pallets and were put in cold storage, probably not frozen but close enough, and stayed there until they were individually wrapped. Frequently one of the crates or a whole pallet was moldy and had to be discarded. I have no idea how long it must've been in the cold storage for that to happen. 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.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  A friend started growing vegetables, and I got some as a gift at the end of the season. 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.
  - apercu 2y ago
    We garden a lot, and buy shares and volunteer for local farming co-ops. 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 :)
  - MichaelRo 2y ago
    Yeah well, my parents have a garden of some 1000 square meters (a quarter acre) and lemme tell ya, there's a lot of stuff you can grow on that area. Obviously as a kid I couldn't escape being sent to attend the garden and saying I wasn't a fan of that is an understatement. Unless you do it as a hobby it's not a pleasant activity. 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 :)
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      Yeah she spent a lot of time on her small plot, and the result was essentially just a handful of meals. Gave me a newfound appreciation for how much work growing crops is.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  If it's sent shipped cross-continent(s) it might be. 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.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    I have access to fresh veggies by taking the elevator down and out of my apartment building. There's a fresh groceries store right in front if i want a salad. But I have no problem with grabbing a bag of frozen veggie mix to make borsch.
- ValveFan6969 2y ago
  Exactly... the real problem is how they're grown. 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.
  - jmcgough 2y ago
    Freezing itself does not lower nutritional value. 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.
- jmcgough 2y ago
  Yes, but refrigeration enabled us to produce at massive scale and then ship large distances. Prior to that, you only ate locally (or what could be preserved through pickling and other methods).
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    And there's another issue I have heard raised — we ate a lot more probiotic foods before refrigeration because you could keep it over the winter. It's proposed that our gut biomes desperately miss those days.
- xaldir 2y ago
  It's better than days old refrigerated food, but not equivalent to freshly picked. 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.
  - schwartzworld 2y ago
    Texture and flavor may suffer, but nutritionally, there is no real difference between fresh or frozen. And in the winter, frozen is sometimes the better choice as they are frozen at the peak of readiness.
- b112 2y ago
  Not how they are grown, but when they were harvested. 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.
- xeromal 2y ago
  Not flavor
- kevstev 2y ago
  IMHO its more about the varieties that are grown for industrial scale and efficiency, rather than flavor. I was part of a community garden and started a lot of stuff from seed- celery, tomatoes, onions, garlic, lettuces etc... and I was overwhelmed by the different numbers of varieties of each and that "celery" isn't just celery. To be fair, not all of it was better- the celery variety was very bitter and chewy, but most other stuff was much more flavorful, though yields were smaller in most cases. The lettuce we grew in particular was so much better than anything sold in a store- at a cost of the fact that it would be wilted and almost unusable by the next day. We did throw in some garlic bulbs straight from the super market to grow next to our "heirloom" variety and the supermarket garlic was exactly what we were used to, while the heirloom was much stronger, and arguably more pleasant (I love garlic). Cooks often joke that "one clove" of garlic really means 5 to them, and I wonder if this is more of a result of breeding garlic over the years for different qualities other than its garlicky-ness instead of just recipe writers with a light hand... I don't think its the methods being used in large scale farming, but really more the varieties attempting to be grown. 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.
- crabbone 2y ago
  Frozen is good for smoothies / shakes. You cannot put fresh berries in a mixer and get a smoothie back, instead you'll get an expensive lump of thick substance that you cannot push through the straw :) 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.
  - Night_Thastus 2y ago
    From what I understand, if you freeze anything quickly as opposed to slowly, the resulting ice crystals are much smaller -and they tend to have much better taste and texture.
    - cultofmetatron 2y ago
      this is true. the process is called flash freezing. 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.
userbinator 2y ago
The home refrigerator is barely a century old When the article was written, it turned 110: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOMELRE 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-electric-fridge/ https://www.coolingpost.com/features/ashrae-displays-first-e...
- _joel 2y ago
  That's a pretty cool hobby...
- yccs27 2y ago
  Home refrigeration is quite a bit older than electric refrigerators though. Iceboxes, kept cool by chunks of ice, were also called refrigerators and started being produced for home use in the 1840s.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    We stored meat in cold conditions back in the paleolithic. All you need really is to know how to dig a hole.
    - samirillian 2y ago
      The question is what changes to the mode of production were brought by the technological advance. I think fatty tuna sushi became popular due to early refrigeration
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Interestingly, my Mom's parents owned both an icebox and a quite modern electric refrigerator (1980s). 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!
theodric 2y ago
> we have lost “diversity and deliciousness" 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.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  The fridge door one came up some time ago on HN with actual data to back it up from "smart" fridges. Some people with kids said it was opened well over 100 times a day which shocked me. 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.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    100 times a day might be bursts of many times in short succession, which is definitely preferable to leaving the door open for what might be a longer cumulative time.
    - wffurr 2y ago
      Minimizing the number of openings, even in favor of longer ones, would reduce the number of times the air in the fridge is cycled. You can probably chart this and calculate an optimum.
  - herbst 2y ago
    When I bought a fridge for my camper I realized why nobody who cares about power usage has a common standing fridge. Every time you open the door the cool air falls out, it sucks in the warm room air and has to start over again. 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.
ZiiS 2y ago
Frozen fish and peas can be a lot fresher then even bought direct from local markets. A lot of the worst offenders for flavour loss, like Tomatoes, are from picking before they are ripe, which favours automation but dosn't really require refrigeration.
- federiconafria 2y ago
  Unless you live in front of the sea, frozen fish is almost always better. Tomatoes can improve substantially if left without refrigeration, it's one of those fruits that continues to ripen after being picked.
  - yumraj 2y ago
    I think there was a Good Eats episode, that tomatoes actually lose flavor if refrigerated - some chemical change, don’t remember the details.
    - tetris11 2y ago
      Does it regain the flavour in the same way chocolate does when brought back to room temp, or does it lose flavour permanently?
      - xaldir 2y ago
        Unfortunately no. The cold degrades some molecules involved in the flavour of the fruit.
        ska 2y ago
        But also yes. There may be some loss as you describe , but they’ll taste better brought back till room temperature than straight from the fridge .
mschuster91 2y ago
> Commercial produce today is both less flavorful and markedly less nutritious than what our great-grandparents ate. Outside a home garden or a farmer’s market, the modern consumer can’t taste truly fresh produce. In our pursuit of endless abundance, Twilley explains, we have lost “diversity and deliciousness.” 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.
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  Farmers markets (at least locally for me in California USA) are a bit of a crap shoot. They've become popular enough that one has to be discerning because some are infiltrated by people simply reselling goods from warehouse stores, though the boutique varieties of produce are pretty much guaranteed to be authentic and if one is lucky some regular produce is much cheaper than even discount grocers.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Both in Germany and Croatia, that's enforced by the market managers, aka the local government. 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.
    - stevenwoo 2y ago
      I’m quite envious of that situation, here it’s an anything goes for the provenance of goods and the onus is on the consumer to be ever vigilant in almost all markets and guaranteed to get worse for a generation at least (federal judges being lifetime appointments).
  - mc32 2y ago
    Decent vendors usually list their website or farm name on their tent/stall. They could make things up of course, but people who frequent the market would get wise to the shenanigans. If it’s some guy with a bunch of wax boxes worth of produce then yeah, they may just be reselling -just like the rando selling strawberries on a random corner without a license.
omnee 2y ago
I can't emphasize this strongly enough. Recently, I had the pleasure of eating at a fine dining restaurant that grows a number of vegetables and herbs, and they presented an amuse bouche with a number of raw vegetables and herbs for us to taste. Their flavours were so elevated compared to the usual counterparts that I get from supermarkets, that I questioned whether any artificial addititives were used - obviously not. The difference is like going from being short sighted but able to complete daily activites with some difficulty, to wearing glasses that makes everything crystal clear and easy.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Moving to the US from Europe the quality of the produce was one of my biggest culture shocks. There was tons more availability especially out of season and it was cheaper but the fruit and vegetables here are so bland. Even the so called heirloom varieties are devoid of the flavor I’m used to. 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.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Turns out you can measure the sweetness of an orange using an infrared light and camera. 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?
    - goda90 2y ago
      This sounds like a business opportunity. Handheld produce analyzers you bring to the store/farmer's market/etc.
  - vondur 2y ago
    Out of season stuff is usually imported from Mexico or South America. I'm guessing the long distance transport conditions may change the taste of the produce?
madcaptenor 2y ago
This is a review of an excellent book by Nicola Twilley. Also worth checking out is Twilley's podcast Gastropod (https://gastropod.com https://gastropod.com), which "looks at food through the lens of science and history".
js2 2y ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-nicola-twilley.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AU8.NwdO.9vKuuIA-awTM&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-ni...

76 points by whocansay 2y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240804172211/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-nicola-twilley.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240804172211/https://www.nytim... https://archive.ph/GNKiL https://archive.ph/GNKiL

gnabgib 2y ago

(2024) Related: Remembering the First 'Cold-Storage Banquet' (33 points, 8 months ago, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41150879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41150879

nottorp 2y ago

Hmm isn't frozen food - even veggies - very close in content to fresh food? The real problem being not how the veggies are stored on their way to us, but how they're grown industrially?

bsder 2y ago
Yeah, frozen is pretty good and quite often better nutritionally as it is more ripe than the "fresh" stuff since it doesn't have to be cosmetically appealing or to stay "fresh" while going on the trip through the cold chain. 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.
- reedf1 2y ago
  Yes exactly - and more broadly pretty much all food consumed globally is automatically selected by tolerance of storage + packaging + shipping. Many varietals and whole specimens have been lost to the annals of history because they cannot make it to a Walmart in North America from Mato Grosso in a scalable (and profitable) way. 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.
  - chii 2y ago
    And thus, this monoculture became susceptible to a single fungal plague that is killing the plantation! And a replacement species is not available.
    - chabska 2y ago
      > 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.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I've worked in a "fresh" vegetable packing factory once... I'll go with frozen food. Stuff like broccoli came in from the fields in crates on pallets and were put in cold storage, probably not frozen but close enough, and stayed there until they were individually wrapped. Frequently one of the crates or a whole pallet was moldy and had to be discarded. I have no idea how long it must've been in the cold storage for that to happen. 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.
magicalhippo 2y ago
A friend started growing vegetables, and I got some as a gift at the end of the season. 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.
- apercu 2y ago
  We garden a lot, and buy shares and volunteer for local farming co-ops. 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 :)
- MichaelRo 2y ago
  Yeah well, my parents have a garden of some 1000 square meters (a quarter acre) and lemme tell ya, there's a lot of stuff you can grow on that area. Obviously as a kid I couldn't escape being sent to attend the garden and saying I wasn't a fan of that is an understatement. Unless you do it as a hobby it's not a pleasant activity. 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 :)
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Yeah she spent a lot of time on her small plot, and the result was essentially just a handful of meals. Gave me a newfound appreciation for how much work growing crops is.
makeitdouble 2y ago
If it's sent shipped cross-continent(s) it might be. 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.
- nottorp 2y ago
  I have access to fresh veggies by taking the elevator down and out of my apartment building. There's a fresh groceries store right in front if i want a salad. But I have no problem with grabbing a bag of frozen veggie mix to make borsch.
ValveFan6969 2y ago
Exactly... the real problem is how they're grown. 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.
- jmcgough 2y ago
  Freezing itself does not lower nutritional value. 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.
jmcgough 2y ago
Yes, but refrigeration enabled us to produce at massive scale and then ship large distances. Prior to that, you only ate locally (or what could be preserved through pickling and other methods).
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  And there's another issue I have heard raised — we ate a lot more probiotic foods before refrigeration because you could keep it over the winter. It's proposed that our gut biomes desperately miss those days.
xaldir 2y ago
It's better than days old refrigerated food, but not equivalent to freshly picked. 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.
- schwartzworld 2y ago
  Texture and flavor may suffer, but nutritionally, there is no real difference between fresh or frozen. And in the winter, frozen is sometimes the better choice as they are frozen at the peak of readiness.
b112 2y ago
Not how they are grown, but when they were harvested. 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.
xeromal 2y ago
Not flavor
kevstev 2y ago
IMHO its more about the varieties that are grown for industrial scale and efficiency, rather than flavor. I was part of a community garden and started a lot of stuff from seed- celery, tomatoes, onions, garlic, lettuces etc... and I was overwhelmed by the different numbers of varieties of each and that "celery" isn't just celery. To be fair, not all of it was better- the celery variety was very bitter and chewy, but most other stuff was much more flavorful, though yields were smaller in most cases. The lettuce we grew in particular was so much better than anything sold in a store- at a cost of the fact that it would be wilted and almost unusable by the next day. We did throw in some garlic bulbs straight from the super market to grow next to our "heirloom" variety and the supermarket garlic was exactly what we were used to, while the heirloom was much stronger, and arguably more pleasant (I love garlic). Cooks often joke that "one clove" of garlic really means 5 to them, and I wonder if this is more of a result of breeding garlic over the years for different qualities other than its garlicky-ness instead of just recipe writers with a light hand... I don't think its the methods being used in large scale farming, but really more the varieties attempting to be grown. 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.
crabbone 2y ago
Frozen is good for smoothies / shakes. You cannot put fresh berries in a mixer and get a smoothie back, instead you'll get an expensive lump of thick substance that you cannot push through the straw :) 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.
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  From what I understand, if you freeze anything quickly as opposed to slowly, the resulting ice crystals are much smaller -and they tend to have much better taste and texture.
  - cultofmetatron 2y ago
    this is true. the process is called flash freezing. 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.

userbinator 2y ago

The home refrigerator is barely a century old When the article was written, it turned 110: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOMELRE 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-electric-fridge/ https://www.coolingpost.com/features/ashrae-displays-first-e...

_joel 2y ago
That's a pretty cool hobby...
yccs27 2y ago
Home refrigeration is quite a bit older than electric refrigerators though. Iceboxes, kept cool by chunks of ice, were also called refrigerators and started being produced for home use in the 1840s.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  We stored meat in cold conditions back in the paleolithic. All you need really is to know how to dig a hole.
  - samirillian 2y ago
    The question is what changes to the mode of production were brought by the technological advance. I think fatty tuna sushi became popular due to early refrigeration
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Interestingly, my Mom's parents owned both an icebox and a quite modern electric refrigerator (1980s). 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!

theodric 2y ago

> we have lost “diversity and deliciousness" 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.

globular-toast 2y ago
The fridge door one came up some time ago on HN with actual data to back it up from "smart" fridges. Some people with kids said it was opened well over 100 times a day which shocked me. 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.
- userbinator 2y ago
  100 times a day might be bursts of many times in short succession, which is definitely preferable to leaving the door open for what might be a longer cumulative time.
  - wffurr 2y ago
    Minimizing the number of openings, even in favor of longer ones, would reduce the number of times the air in the fridge is cycled. You can probably chart this and calculate an optimum.
- herbst 2y ago
  When I bought a fridge for my camper I realized why nobody who cares about power usage has a common standing fridge. Every time you open the door the cool air falls out, it sucks in the warm room air and has to start over again. 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.

ZiiS 2y ago

Frozen fish and peas can be a lot fresher then even bought direct from local markets. A lot of the worst offenders for flavour loss, like Tomatoes, are from picking before they are ripe, which favours automation but dosn't really require refrigeration.

federiconafria 2y ago
Unless you live in front of the sea, frozen fish is almost always better. Tomatoes can improve substantially if left without refrigeration, it's one of those fruits that continues to ripen after being picked.
- yumraj 2y ago
  I think there was a Good Eats episode, that tomatoes actually lose flavor if refrigerated - some chemical change, don’t remember the details.
  - tetris11 2y ago
    Does it regain the flavour in the same way chocolate does when brought back to room temp, or does it lose flavour permanently?
    - xaldir 2y ago
      Unfortunately no. The cold degrades some molecules involved in the flavour of the fruit.
      - ska 2y ago
        But also yes. There may be some loss as you describe , but they’ll taste better brought back till room temperature than straight from the fridge .

mschuster91 2y ago

> Commercial produce today is both less flavorful and markedly less nutritious than what our great-grandparents ate. Outside a home garden or a farmer’s market, the modern consumer can’t taste truly fresh produce. In our pursuit of endless abundance, Twilley explains, we have lost “diversity and deliciousness.” 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.

stevenwoo 2y ago
Farmers markets (at least locally for me in California USA) are a bit of a crap shoot. They've become popular enough that one has to be discerning because some are infiltrated by people simply reselling goods from warehouse stores, though the boutique varieties of produce are pretty much guaranteed to be authentic and if one is lucky some regular produce is much cheaper than even discount grocers.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Both in Germany and Croatia, that's enforced by the market managers, aka the local government. 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.
  - stevenwoo 2y ago
    I’m quite envious of that situation, here it’s an anything goes for the provenance of goods and the onus is on the consumer to be ever vigilant in almost all markets and guaranteed to get worse for a generation at least (federal judges being lifetime appointments).
- mc32 2y ago
  Decent vendors usually list their website or farm name on their tent/stall. They could make things up of course, but people who frequent the market would get wise to the shenanigans. If it’s some guy with a bunch of wax boxes worth of produce then yeah, they may just be reselling -just like the rando selling strawberries on a random corner without a license.

omnee 2y ago

I can't emphasize this strongly enough. Recently, I had the pleasure of eating at a fine dining restaurant that grows a number of vegetables and herbs, and they presented an amuse bouche with a number of raw vegetables and herbs for us to taste. Their flavours were so elevated compared to the usual counterparts that I get from supermarkets, that I questioned whether any artificial addititives were used - obviously not. The difference is like going from being short sighted but able to complete daily activites with some difficulty, to wearing glasses that makes everything crystal clear and easy.

throwup238 2y ago
Moving to the US from Europe the quality of the produce was one of my biggest culture shocks. There was tons more availability especially out of season and it was cheaper but the fruit and vegetables here are so bland. Even the so called heirloom varieties are devoid of the flavor I’m used to. 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.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Turns out you can measure the sweetness of an orange using an infrared light and camera. 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?
  - goda90 2y ago
    This sounds like a business opportunity. Handheld produce analyzers you bring to the store/farmer's market/etc.
- vondur 2y ago
  Out of season stuff is usually imported from Mexico or South America. I'm guessing the long distance transport conditions may change the taste of the produce?

madcaptenor 2y ago

This is a review of an excellent book by Nicola Twilley. Also worth checking out is Twilley's podcast Gastropod (https://gastropod.com https://gastropod.com), which "looks at food through the lens of science and history".

js2 2y ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-nicola-twilley.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AU8.NwdO.9vKuuIA-awTM&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/books/review/frostbite-ni...