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Frozen food turns 90

2020-03-06T03:43:44.292Z


Frozen pizza and fish fingers are a matter of course every day. But the triumphal procession of frozen food only began 90 years ago in a small American town.


Frozen pizza and fish fingers are a matter of course every day. But the triumphal procession of frozen food only began 90 years ago in a small American town.

Berlin (dpa) - No matter whether fish fingers, ready-made pizza or a cake to defrost: frozen food is hard to imagine today.

The German Freezer Institute has calculated that every German citizen consumes an average of around 47 kilograms a year - and the trend is rising. The success story of frozen products started 90 years ago.

Origins are in the United States

Frozen food was born on March 6, 1930, when frozen groceries were sold for the first time in ten grocery stores in the small town of Springfield in the US state of Massachusetts, as can be read in the archives of the food company Unilever. The offer was rather modest at the time. There were vegetables, fruit, meat and fish.

A few years earlier, American marine biologist Clarence Birdseye came up with the idea of ​​freezing on a research trip to the Arctic. There he had seen how the Eskimos used the cold in winter to make fish and meat long-lasting. To do this, they hung fresh catch or the prey they had just hunted in the icy wind, which was down to minus 45 degrees Celsius, and were able to consume the preserved food for months.

Birdseye developed the first blast freezer that allowed him to imitate it, giving the go-ahead to an industry that is still booming today. It became so successful that in 1984 US President Ronald Reagan proclaimed March 6th "Frozen Food Day". The frozen food industry has made people's lives easier and made many products that were previously only available seasonally available, said the President.

Frozen food quickly became a success

However, it still took decades before the frozen food also came to Germany. In 1955, such products were presented for the first time at the Anuga food fair in Cologne, according to the frozen food institute. A year later, the so-called "Cologne-Bonn chest test" started in the Rhineland. 400 freezers were set up in the region in which the dealers were able to offer their customers the unusual goods for the first time.

Success came slowly - but tremendously. While per capita consumption in 1960 averaged 400 grams of frozen food a year, it has increased more than a hundredfold since then. Initially, consumers had a choice of just five products, but today there are around 17,000 items on offer, as Sabine Eichner, the managing director of the German Frozen Food Institute reports.

Today almost everybody consumes frozen foods

In the past year, according to estimates by the frozen food institute in Germany, a total of almost 4 million tons of frozen food were consumed - about half were sold through the food trade, the rest were delivered to restaurants and canteens. The turnover should have been around 15 billion euros. "Around 98 percent of consumers now buy frozen products," reports Eichner.

The trend is increasingly moving away from frozen basic products such as fish fillet or vegetables to finished products that only need to be warmed up in the oven or in the microwave. The industry has seen the greatest growth in frozen ready meals, pizzas and baked goods in recent years.

Life cycle assessment not worse than with uncooled food

The frozen food manufacturers are happy to take up trends in food retailing such as organic or regional products. And the industry sees itself as sustainable anyway. As early as 2012, a study by the Öko-Institut confirmed that frozen food was at least not less harmful to the climate than its uncooled comparison products despite the energy consumption for cooling.

It was healthy because the vitamins were retained during shock freezing. In addition, the products could be portioned as needed, which counteracts food waste. And even the cooking process in the commercial kitchen is much more energy efficient than in your own four walls, according to the environmental research institute.

Frozen Food Market 2019

Öko-Institut climate balance frozen food

Source: merkur

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