Bee Wilson reviews Nicola Twilley’s book “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet and Ourselves.” Refrigeration is a huge part of our lives, and this technology has reshaped not just our diets but also our relationship with food itself. For all the good it does, it also has impacts on flavor, nutrition and the environment.
The farm-to-tablers drew attention to the disconnect between eaters and farmers. Twilley’s well-researched project is subtly and importantly different. She shows that modern eaters are ignorant not just of farming but of the vast and wintry logistics that bring farm produce to our plates and determine the form and content of much of our diets.
During the ten years she was working on this book, people used to ask Twilley whether she thought they should get rid of their fridges. To which her answer was: of course not. And yet, for every virtue, refrigeration has a corresponding vice. On the plus side is the astonishing abundance of fresh and nutritious produce now available to us. The negative is that none of it is quite as nutritious as it seems. Spinach loses three-quarters of its vitamin C after a week spent stored in plastic in the fridge. It may still look and smell OK – which is a marvel in itself – but it is not fresh in the sense that newly picked spinach is.