Science: Food Freezers

Last year Americans ate nearly a billion pounds of commercially frozen foods. About a half-billion more pounds were stored in 5,000 cold-locker plants by some 1,500,000 U.S. families. The quick-freezing boom, barely 15 years old, is growing fast. Last week a propagandist who has contributed to the boom, maga zine Writer Boyden Sparkes, published a book predicting that the next big move will be toward freezing and storage in the home (Zero Storage in Your Home; Doubleday, Doran; $2.50).

Many food technologists believe that after the war quick freezing will supplant canning and dehydration as the chief method of food preservation. To Zealot Sparkes, such speculation is overcautious. He asserts that food freezing may revolutionize the U.S. standard of living. City people will buy their food wholesale. People “in modest circumstances,” Sparkes glows, “may eat cheaply such meals as heretofore were available only to rich gourmets.” Farm families will have an easily preserved, tasty winter supply of their own produce—including much that they now waste of summer’s abundance.

Author Sparkes has a 26-cubic-foot freezer on his North Carolina farm, keeps it stuffed with whole lamb carcasses, chickens, cream, sweet corn, grapes, strawberries, quail, pigeons—all of which his family can eat fresh the year round. He also keeps in touch with other members of the small but fanatical cult of U.S. citizens who own home freezers. Their exploits are reverently recorded in his book. The Fyler family, of West Simsbury, Conn., reports that its freezer saves it $1,000 a year. A Mrs. Spencer of Pueblo, Colo., whom Sparkes salutes as a “distinguished pioneer,” gives an awesome account of freezing 2,000 quarts of food annually, from soups to shortcake.

The Works. The first quick-freezing process was patented by Inventor Clarence Birdseye of Gloucester, Mass, in 1925 Food is frozen at 10 to 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) below zero, stored at zero or below It keeps its flavor, vitamins, color and tastes as fresh when taken out of storage (after a year or two in some cases) as when it was put in. Freezing is less trouble than canning or dehydrating. The food is blanched in boiling water or steam, then wrapped in a moisture-proof, vapor-proof container and sealed with a warm iron. (Fruits are packed in sugar syrup to prevent oxidation.)

Home freezing machines range from four to 35 cubic feet. So great is the demand for them (manufacture has been suspended during the war) that soda-fountain ice-cream cabinets worth $25 as scrap have been refurbished and sold for as much as $800. A family locker in a storage plant usually holds about 200 Ibs. of food, rents for an average of $12 a year. Capacity of a 26-cu.-ft. home freezer: about 1,000 Ibs.

The Quirks. The chief disadvantage of home freezing has been the high cost of the freezer. Though relatively inexpensive to run ($2 to $3 a month), freezers range in price from $300 to $1,000. They are also inconvenient, because food packages piled up in the box are hard to get at. Moreover, an electric power failure may ruin the whole batch of food.

But Sparkes reports that manufacturers expect all these drawbacks to be overcome by technological improvement and mass production after the war. Some hope to produce a good-sized freezer for less than $200. New refrigerants, better insulation materials, drawer-type construction will make freezers more efficient.

About the only foods that have not been successfully frozen, says Sparkes, are tomatoes, potatoes and onions. He has found that even stale bread, frozen, “miraculously thaws out fresh.”