Nicola Twilley. Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. Penguin. NY. 2024, pp. 387 ISBN: 9780735223288.
Richard Zimmer. Sonoma State University
The title of Nicola Twilley’s extremely readable and engaging book says it all: refrigeration has changed all aspects of our life. It has shaped the way we keep and cook food—and ourselves—and the ways in which cold has shaped food production, the supply chains, the organization of work and labor, related industries, and also human habitation. Twilley takes us from the beginnings of food preservation to the ways in which food kept cold shapes our ways of life.
She starts by plunging the reader into a deep freezer facility in Ontario, California. It is a highly dangerous world, new to her and to most of us—with its own mechanical life, social life, and language. It is also essential as to how different parts of the food chain fit together—from production to packaging to shipping. It is also a model of how countries, which have yet to develop such structures, are developing their own refrigeration policies and practices.
Next, she recounts the history of food preservation, including the various attempts to use ice in this process. Ice preservation started thousands of years ago. European Enlightenment scientists began experimenting with gases and later with machinery. It was the development of industrial society in the nineteenth century, documented in chapter two, that first saw increased the demand for transporting existing ice and then for creating ice itself to address the needs of the larger urban society.
Twilley then turns her focus on the changes—social, economic, and political—that a scientific mistake caused in the world in the 19th century: “…Justus von Liebig…mistakenly concluded that protein was the only nutritive element in food” (69). Providing protein in the form of meat became the new goal—so as to feed the increasing urban populations of Europe and North America. To provide that protein, whole economies and whole societies and politics changed in European centers and the “feeder” areas, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas. For example, Irish left Ireland not just because of the potato famine but because of the changes in meat production. And the pressure was on to develop the technology to bring meat to market from afar—and that meant refrigeration. Furthermore, she contends: “…all of these far-reaching and unnecessary consequences of refrigerating meat were spurred in part by a nutritional fallacy: the mistaken conclusion that protein from flesh foods was the only essential nutrient. If chemists had come down in favor of grains and beans instead, the world might have looked very different” (82).
Once the idea and practice of refrigeration became accepted by an often-wary public, it began to change again. Initially, various kinds of meats, especially beef and lamb, were cold frozen. Over time, it was found that aging meats in cold worked better to soften them and prevent unhealthy bacteria from forming. Cold dry aging for meats worked well and is still done—at a significantly higher labor cost (104 et seq.) New forms of cutting and packaging meats simplified the process. But it meant more semi-and unskilled workers in the slaughterhouses and packaging plants. Refrigeration has meant that cattle, lamb, pork, and chicken have become the largest animal populations on Earth—while fish have decreased by half (105-108). This is happening with significant environmental consequences.
Twilley then explores what refrigeration (and packaging) have done to and for fruits and vegetables. Produce ripens differently from meat. And each type of produce has its own trajectory. Lettuce originally was shipped with ice—hence, “iceberg lettuce.” Later, refrigeration addressed how to keep the different varieties of lettuce “fresh.” Refrigeration also caused systemic changes: California’s Salinas Valley produces 70% of the country’s crop. And packaged salads required the development of special plastic bags.
Twilley goes on to explore how different varieties of apples could be kept from ripening too early. The ones that stayed unripe longer, like many other fruits, could be sold all year long. The same is true of bananas. Wha happens, however, is that only some varieties of produce respond to refrigeration: “The abundance that refrigeration promises is accompanied by a diminishment in both diversity add deliciousness, the stability it brings to the marketplace comes at the cost of greater risk, and its assurance of plenty is undercut by increased vulnerability” (160).
Nevertheless, people anywhere in the world can now enjoy produce all year long. Twilley paints an exciting and fascinating account of the century long development of refrigerated shipping, storage, and finished food preparation. Tne result is that countries and regions become specialized in specific crop production, processing, and storage. “California is increasingly outperformed by its understudies: today more than half the fruit and nearly a third of the vegetables eaten in the United States are imported” (188). The finished food preparation meant the explosive production of frozen meals and the resultant changes in lifestyles of people.
Previous offshoring meant also changes in land use and labor. Covid and other threats to the supply chain necessitate a re-evaluation of offshoring of any products, in this case food (References 1 and 2 ). One emerging solution is urban farming (Reference 3).
Cold storage continues to determine where foods are kept and from where they are shipped. In the US, the Central States are a major hub. Missouri, for example, has caves which are centrally located, and transportation, such as the old Route 66—Interstate 40. Ports get fitted and repurposed along the East Coast as well. And, Twilley adds, similar changes are occurring in China (211 et seq.)
Refrigeration had made it possible for food to be delivered to consumers as fresh or frozen. Twilley then examines what changes occurred in their lives because food could be kept cold. Home refrigerators changed from being ice boxes to centers of a person’s or family’s life. A refrigerator could be a display of a person’s persona, It could show how much money they are willing to spend and what their taste is. It could also be the person’s or family’ art gallery on its door. It could be the repository of what someone eats, how they think about food, and what the person throws away. Twilley notes the UCLA Anthropology Department’s study of how people use their cold machines to prioritize their food purchases and usages. Extra space meant more buying, including more wastage because, even with the cold, food did spoil or did not keep. William Rathje, the Garbologist, found that people thought that they did not waste food—but they did. Middle class people wasted more than lower class and upper-class people (233-4). And visual innovations, such as lazy Susan trays did not always help. Moreover, grocers did not want to share expiration dates with refrigerator manufacturers, because a consumer throwing away food does not hurt their profits (235).
Refrigerating everything has sparked a counter-refrigeration revolution. Not everything that is now in the refrigerator, many advocates say, should be there. Some, like apples, do well in semi-outside settings, and some, like root vegetables, do better standing up in the way they originally grew. Cool places in cubbies and counters can provide an appropriate location (243). One is reminded of vegetable cellars in farm areas and the below-the-kitchen window little enclaves in urban areas of the early Twentieth Century.
Refrigeration changed what we eat and drink and when we eat it. Twilley points to the cheeseburger as an example. Its various components are a result of components that arrive from their sources and are frozen or refrigerated at different times of the year (244). Refrigeration made cold beer easily possible.Refrigeration allowed for new combinations of food, including leftovers.
But is refrigeration the solution to storage, the cure-all? “Ultimately, it seems as if the short-term health benefits of refrigeration—a reduction in illness and death from bacterial infections, a reduction in cases of stomach cancer, and some additional animal protein to grow a little stronger and taller—might yet prove to have been offset by its downsides” (274). Twilley draws on medical, food production, and economic research and ties it to several centuries of food production and consumption to suggest this. Preindustrial Western countries had preservatives and more variety of food. Industrialization destroyed this. Refrigeration did help restore some of the deficits caused by its lack, such as a person’s height. It may have taken away the necessary microbes that affect physical, elevating inflammation, and mental health. It may also encourage fast-food consumption because refrigerated produce has lost its taste. And it may have encouraged more consumption of sweet drinks because cold “…inadvertently led us to prefer sweeter food” (272).
The Global North and certain parts of the “developed” Global South are also beneficiaries of air conditioning. Together with the advantages of refrigeration for foodstuffs, they are living in a new era: the “Comfortocene” (Barber 2023). For the first time in human history, people can adjust the climate and their world to their pleasure—but at a great cost in energy and resources.
Twilley then addresses the whole world and the future in terms of refrigeration. The Global South does not have adequate refrigeration. Consequently, there is more spoilage. Exciting initiatives, such as ACES-the Africa Center of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chain in Rwanda, are experimenting with different kinds of refrigeration as well as moving foodstuffs from source to consumer (298 et seq.) But still larger problems remain, not just in that area but for the planet as a whole—the different compounds for refrigerants and the massive amounts of energy necessary to cool foodstuffs for an increasing population (295-297). The implications for climate change, Twilley argues, are serious.
So, too, are getting people to change what they cool or freeze to eat and where they do those activities. Many people are trying to develop new forms of refrigeration as well as trying to convince people to use these forms. One might include communal coolers. So far there are no major breakthroughs. Another is to preserve food by coating the outside in an edible acceptable powder because preservation is dependent on oxygen ( cf. 305-6). Another approach is to get people in the Global North to synchronize themselves with the seasonality of foods, a practice lost with the advent of refrigeration (312).
Twilley ends her journey with another window of hope and warning. She recounts her visit to the seed bank in Northern Norway. All the world’s plants seeds are there. After her visit, she foresees the future and argues that that future is in significant part dependent on how all the nations of the world develop refrigeration policies that affect the climate and environment (321).
This is a book appropriate for all levels of university students and for the general reader. It is of particular use for anthropologists and social scientists of food and nutrition, work, economic issues, development, agriculture, and gender. It offers excellent views of the people and places involved in the world of refrigeration as well as an excellent history of the process. Lastly, it provides resources for further research.
References Cited
Daniel Barber. Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning. Princeton University Press 2021. Princeton, New Jersey.
Cited Sites:
1
2
https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/international/topic/urban-agriculture
(Accessed Dec. 10, 2024)
3 https://www.nal.usda.gov/farms-and-agricultural-production-systems/urban-agriculture
(Accessed Dec. 10, 2024)
