Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How refrigeration changed our food

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 86 posts

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#51

Post by i80and »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #15
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Yep. Even something simple like bay leaves. I have some from a community garden. Dropped in a couple as normal and you can immediately taste something different compared to store bought leaves. Too bad local farming is not scalable.

Bay leaves that aren't dessicated and crumbled to dust in the sad little spice jar are kind of magical

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#52

Post by JKCalhoun »

jmcgough wrote: post #22
nottorp wrote: post #4

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?

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).

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.

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#53

Post by wffurr »

userbinator wrote: post #25
globular-toast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

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.

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.

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#55

Post by throwup238 »

omnee wrote: post #50

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 no…

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.

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#56

Post by MisterTea »

userbinator wrote: post #6

The home refrigerator is barely a century old When the article was written, it turned 110: 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-e...

> (owning a mid-30s Frigidaire myself)

Growing up in my fathers shop we had a 30's Frigidaire as well. One summer day it was outside getting defrosted and washed when an employee decides to be helpful and chip the ice with a screwdriver. Yes, he punctured the coils. What a scene, I was there and saw the pop, my grandfather sees it through the door and comes flying out screaming, then my father comes out and it turns into a scene (guy wasn't fired but got an ear full.) My grandfather silver soldered the aluminum coil but the few technicians they called didn't want to or know how to charge it. So it went to the scrap guy. I was just a kid but if I were older I would have pushed to get it fixed.

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#57

Post by londons_explore »

throwup238 wrote: post #55
omnee wrote: post #50

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 no…

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 swee…

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?

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#58

Post by AStonesThrow »

omnee wrote: post #50

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 no…

If you can find a good family-run Vietnamese Phở restaurant, try it out. The ones around here serve very fresh food, and I specifically asked the wife where she got the fresh herbs, and she said that grandma grows them in her backyard. There are spearmint, cilantro, jalapeños, and bean sprouts. They are always so very consistent and fresh and very healthy plants. There is absolutely no comparison to this sort of restaurant. The others can serve food-service slop, and somehow, Vietnamese cooks' main ingredient is love.

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#59

Post by codybontecou »

omnee wrote: post #50

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 no…

Oo can you share the restaurants name?

Re: How refrigeration changed our food

#60

Post by uncertainrhymes »

globular-toast wrote: post #18
theodric wrote: post #12

> 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 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 d…

My math may be off, but it seems like 2000 joules to cool the volume of air 1 degree C vs 6,000,000 for the same volume of water.

It's the stuff in the fridge that takes the initial work, repeatedly exchanging the air is maybe a rounding error?

Post reply on HN