Refrigeration used to be just a way to cool your food and drinks so they would taste better, but it has continuously evolved from this. Now, refrigeration helps people become healthier and safer by improving the industrial process. Before we Americans had our fancy new refrigerators, the Chinese stored harvested ice before the 1stmillennium. Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans placed big amounts of snow into storage pits, covered the cooling agent with insulated material. the Egyptians had to fill up earth-like jars with boiled water from lakes, then they would stick it on the roof so the night's cold air would freeze it. Although these were clever ideas at the time, the water they used probably had some contaminated minerals within it which made some people a little nervous about how much refrigeration helped it. This soon lead to refrigeration evolving to make refrigeration safer for health as well as more secure for the environment. According to FindingDulcinea, this went all the way from iceboxes to electric refrigeration. This also lead to it becoming industrial as it helped the food and liquid business make their product healthier.
In later days, people resorted to preserving food in cellars, window boxes, and even underwater to cool their food and water. Since there became a consumer demand for fresh food, a man named Nathaniel Wyeth soon cheaply and quickly cut down ice blocks, which soon lead to a great ice supply. The first real fridge was made in September 1918 in Detroit. And in 1879, 35 ice plants were created which had developed a new stage in the industrial process with ice. Now people could regularly use ice for their food and drinks instead of storing them in strange places where their items were less likely to become cold (cellars, window boxes, underwater). From the source ASHRAE, there were apparently some complaints about the ice plants being too “deadly” to the environment, so this encouraged Australia to build a new mechanical-like refrigeration unit. Soon, everyone had this wonderful mechanical fridge which had the best chance of keeping food and water safe and secure while being cold. This really improved the industrial process as it was soon used for several types of food and liquids which made the people who ate and drank them healthier.
The industrial process refrigeration probably helped the most was the meat industry. Although it took a while to improve the meat industry with refrigeration, the payoffs were big. Originally, people didn’t eat too much meat as they couldn’t quite find a way to make it fresh and healthy to eat as they were worried they could get a disease from it. This made people feel paranoid about meat. However, there was soon a way to make cooling meat, fast, safe, and secure with refrigeration in the industry business. A little while after the mechanical fridge was created, there were now storage freezers which according to
Danfoss, stored meat in an accurate temperature-controlled and stainless steel (no corrosion) environment. There was also the invention of fridge cars, which could store meat in the fresh cold and get it easily from one place to another. This helped a lot. Because of this, people began buying meat more and eating it since they felt better it was placed into a refrigerator, so now there was a less likely chance of disease or sickness. People would now also have a longer lifespan since meat was now healthier since they could place the meat in their own fridge and eat it as leftovers without it tasting worse.
Another thing refrigeration helped with the industrial process was brewing beer. Although this wasn’t exactly healthy from the start, refrigerators made beer safer to drink and more cold so it would taste better. Originally, Germans gave America its very own ale compared to our beer. We liked it so much, we decided to brew this new alcohol in newly refrigerated breweries. According to
History Magazine, brewing was also the first activity to use refrigeration in the north, as it had primarily been used in the south until then. The first company to use refrigeration in a brewery started out in Brooklyn, New York. Soon, every brewery had a refrigeration unit to improve their beer quality and business. By being improved by the power of the refrigerator, more people drank beer which although was not healthy at all, lead to healthier things. Since beer improved after refrigeration, people soon decided to use it to improve meat, and that’s where the healthiness of refrigeration truly began to shine.
In conclusion, refrigeration did improve health by improving the industrial society through making food healthier to consume and drinks healthier (or at least better) to drink. According to the
USDA(US Department of Agriculture), people needed to keep their fridges clean to do so and so industrial companies had to occasionally clean fridge trucks and refrigeration storage units to keep the food and drinks fresh and not become contaminated with bacteria in the food, but this was just a minor price to pay. Although, leftovers still don’t taste as good the first time today, refrigeration greatly improved the quality of them which also made us healthier. And if Americans continue to use their fridge, they will be less worried about health risks of the food and become healthier as they are encouraged to eat more food (like meat) thanks to the improvement of industrialization because of refrigeration.
