Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - How Clarence Birdseye Created the Frozen Food Aisle

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

For thousands of years, food storage was one of humanity’s biggest problems. Even if you could grow or hunt sufficient calories when food was abundant, it was very difficult to store those calories for when food was scarce. One man made a huge advancement in our ability to store foods, which now allows us to enjoy fresh produce all year round. Learn more about Clarence Birdseye, and the invention of frozen foods, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, food storage was one of humanity's biggest problems. Even if you could grow or hunt sufficient calories when food was abundant, it was very difficult to store those calories for when food was scarce. One man made a huge advancement in our ability to store foods, which now allows us to enjoy fresh food all year round. Learn more about Clarence Bird's Eye and the invention of frozen foods on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This week's episode is sponsored by Expedia's OutTravel the System podcast. I'm going to take you a minute to tell you about a podcast we think you'll really like. Out Travel the System. The podcast draws on the deep foundations of travel data provided by Expedia to provide insight on overall travel trends and to show you how to save big on your next trip. That can mean anything from what time of the week or year to book your stay to staying ahead of popular trends.

You know, we pride ourselves on being able to give you the inside scoop on what's going on right now in the world of travel, and that's why we think you might enjoy listening to the show. Out travel the system also specializes in exploring what we love most about travel, from how it benefits us or the economy. to living vicariously through people who've had experiences you may never have dreamed of, like camping in the middle of an African forest. Get all of this and more by finding Out Travel the System on your favorite podcast player. Like and subscribe to get the newest episode right when they come out. Way back in the day, food storage was a huge problem. Let's say you and your tribe went hunting and came back with a really large animal.

Basically, you had to eat the vast amount of it before it spoiled. You could take some of the meat and dry it, but that was really the end. only option for storing food. Native peoples of North America would often create a food called pemmican, which was dried meat, berries, and fat all mixed together. It was a high-calorie food, which was great when you and your clan would move from one place to another. Eventually, humanity figured out more methods of food preservation. Fermentation became a popular option all over the world. Korean kimchi, German sourcrow, and Swedish surstroming, which I previously did an episode on, are all fermented foods that are still with us today. Salt was used as a preservative

as well. You could store food in brine or just cover it in salt, which would kill bacteria. And later, canning became an option as well. You would just basically boil everything to kill the microbes and then seal the container before it cooled down. What most of these methods had in common was that they fundamentally changed the food. Dried, salted, fermented, or canned food didn't taste like fresh food. The process chemically altered the food, still keeping it edible, but removing nutrients and taste. Going into the 20th century, this was still pretty much the state of things. We had managed to figure out how to preserve ice year round and people began to get ice boxes, but that could only preserve foods temporarily. Freezing food wasn't yet a thing. Or I should

say, freezing food wasn't something that really worked. In colder climates, you could certainly freeze food. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, methods to freeze water developed. As early as 1861, Australian inventor Thomas Sutcliffe Moore developed an artificial means of creating ice. This technique was used in the late 19th century for shipping meat and bulk long distances. But there was a problem with freezing foods. It would often turn the foods to mush. This is a consequence of the unique properties of water, and what happens when you freeze it. Unlike most substances, when water freezes, it expands. This is the reason why potholes can develop in northern latitudes, and why food that is improperly frozen can taste horrible. As food slowly freezes, the water in the cells form ice crystals,

which burst the cell walls. When the food thaws out, the cell walls leak, turning the food into mush. Frozen food was so bad at this point that New York State even passed a law preventing it from being fed to prisoners. This is why crops like oranges are so vulnerable to freezing temperatures which might threaten an orchard. Once an orange, or any other plant for that matter, freezes, it can destroy the plant. Enter into the story Clarence Bird's Eye. Clarence Birdseye was born in Brooklyn in 1886. He had an interest in science and nature throughout his life.

He attended Amherst College, but had to drop out due to finances. He took several jobs as a researcher for various government departments and did research projects like collecting ticks in Montana to try to find the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. In 1912, he joined a project which took him to Labrador in what is today Canada. Fun fact, back then, Newfoundland and Labrador were actually separate countries and didn't join Canada until 1949. While in Labrador, he met many in Florida.

Inuit people who taught him the secrets to fishing in the winter. One of the things which they did is they took fish they caught and immediately threw them onto the ice where they would quickly freeze in temperatures, which would dip down to 40 below, which, fun fact, is the exact same temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. Clarence quickly realized something about the fish. After they thought out, they tasted fresh. It was far better than the frozen fish he had tasted back in New York City, which was at that point illegal to give to prisoners.

The difference was the temperature at which he froze the fish, which was far colder than what most foods were normally frozen at. He realized that he had something here that people would pay for, and it was superior to anything else being done. Several years later, he returned back to the United States and began experimenting with the process of flash freezing, trying to artificially replicate the conditions he found in Labrador in the winter. In 1922, he began conducting experiments on the flash freezing of fish. This eventually led to the creation of the Bird's Eye Seafoods Company, which began freezing fish fillets in chilled air at negative 45 degrees Fahrenheit. This first company eventually went bankrupt, as there wasn't any customer demand for his food. Moreover, he realized that simply freezing the food wasn't enough.

He needed to develop an entire infrastructure around frozen food. He also kept tinkering with flash freezing technology. He developed the double belt freezer, which was two extremely cold plates that would flash freeze packages of fish and vegetables that were put between them. This is considered the beginning of the frozen food industry. In 1929, he sold his company and all of its patents to what would become general foods. In the middle of the Great Depression, he got $22 million. They eventually launched an entire line of frozen food products called Birdseye, named after Clarence Birdseye, which still exists today. Flash freezing was only the first step,

however. Once it was frozen, you had to get the food to the consumer. That were required. an entire supply chain that could handle frozen food. In 1930, the first frozen food sections were placed in stores around Springfield, Massachusetts. The initial offerings included a selection of fish, meat, berries, spinach, fruit, and oysters. The new frozen foods were a hit with consumers, as it tasted much better than canned food. An entirely new industry developed for the transportation, storage, and sale of frozen foods. Clarence Birdseye eventually developed freezers for trains, trucks, and retail stores. In World War II, frozen foods became even more popular as the U.S. government discouraged people

from purchasing canned food. Canned foods were given priority for troops fighting overseas because they could be transported without freezing. Frozen foods were reserved for people on the home front. After World War II, when soldiers returned home, Americans kept buying frozen foods. Immediately after the war in 1945 and 46, Americans consumed 800 million pounds of frozen food. 1954 saw the creation of both the TV dinner and the fish stick, which only cemented the popularity of frozen foods. The creation of the TV dinner will warrant its own episode in the future because, quite frankly, it is a fascinating story.

Clarence Bird's Eye passed away in 1956 at the age of 69. He left the legacy that can be seen any time you walk into a grocery store. The frozen food section is now one of the largest sections in most grocery stores, everything from concentrated fruit juice to frozen pizza, to box, meals to frozen vegetables can be found in the frozen food aisle. One of the benefits of frozen foods is that they require no additives or preservatives and can often be frozen just hours after being harvested. By the year 2026, the frozen food industry in just the United States alone will be estimated to be over $366 billion. So the next time you set foot in a grocery store and walk past the frozen food section, just give a moment to thank the man who came up with

the idea by ice fishing with Inuits in Labrador. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show. Say, you guys think you're lucky you can get Swanson TV turkey dinners, but I say Swanson TV turkey dinners are a bigger break for husbands.

Now, you take me. I can be early, I can be late, I can bring pals to dinner any time I please, and get this, my wife never panics. She just takes Swanson TV turkey dinners from the freezing compartment of our refrigerator when I'm a little off schedule. Oh, ho. And right you are, Jack. And that is because Mary Lou knows that she can have a swell dinner ready in just 25 minutes. Right. And talk about easy.