In the early 1900s, people didn’t trust refrigerated food. Fruits and vegetables, cuts of meat… these things are supposed to decay, right? As Nicola Twilley writes, “What kind of unnatural technology could deliver a two-year old chicken carcass that still looked as though it was slaughtered yesterday?”

But just a few decades later, Americans have done a full one-eighty. Livestock can be slaughtered thousands of miles away, and taste just as good (or better) by the time it hits your plate.  Apples can be stored for over a year without any noticeable change. A network called the “cold-chain” criss-crosses the country, and at home our refrigerators are fooling us into thinking we waste less food than we actually do. 

Today, refrigeration has reshaped what we eat, how we cook it, and even warped our very definition of what is and isn’t “fresh.” 

Featuring Nicola Twilley.

For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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LINKS

You can find Nicola’s new book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves,” at your local bookstore or online.

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