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In 1927, General Electric introduced the "Monitor Top," the first commercially successful home-use refrigerator (the unit was so-named because the motor sat on top of the fridge). This marked the beginning of a near-wholesale change in the eating habits of Americans and, eventually, the entire industrialized world. It also represented a major shift in the way we define food products as "fresh." As Susanne Freidberg writes in Fresh: A Perishable History, the introduction of home refrigeration (buoyed by the proliferation of electricity in urban neighbourhoods) reflected a new idea "that freshness depend[ed] less on time or distance than on the technology that protect[ed] it."

Before the Monitor Top, most households employed ice boxes to keep food fresh. But the ice box was never a particularly useful contraption: As the ice inside melted (and was replaced, often multiple times daily, with new ice), the temperature would fluctuate dramatically -- food might initially freeze and then rapidly thaw. This created an awful mess, not to mention a toxic environment in which the natural bacteria and enzymes in various foods mixed and melded to create unnatural smells and unhealthy tastes.

An ice box would be considered a serious health concern these days. But the upshot of owning one in the late-19th century and early-20th century was that you were more likely -- specifically because of the technological limitations -- to eat food that was fresher. You had to eat local -- because there was a serious possibility that anything grown or raised outside your neighbourhood (or on another continent) would be spoiled or even poisonous by the time it reached the market.

Ironically, the refrigerator, an appliance designed to keep our food fresher for a longer period of time, has actually meant that we eat things that are not at all, in the classic sense, fresh.

The advent of cold storage (refrigeration on an industrial scale) in the mid-to late-1800s

also meant that food producers gained a stronger hand in what we eat and when we eat it. Cold storage even gave manufacturers power over how much we pay for our food. When U. S. food prices rose dramatically in 1910-11, many argued that cold storage was the culprit -- now that producers and marketers had the power to keep meat, eggs and produce "fresher" for extended periods, it was argued, they could manipulate the laws of supply and demand to drive up prices. (U. S. lawmakers would eventually step in to regulate the cold storage

industry and how much product manufacturers could stockpile at a given time.)

Then there is the matter of whether refrigeration really does maintain freshness. Answer: It depends. Milk and eggs will stay fresher for longer, but meat and fish might not (especially the latter). As for fruits and vegetables, oftentimes sticking them in cold storage will do more harm than good. According to Freidberg, "refrigeration slows wilting and rot," but "it can damage the flavour, texture and appearance" of vegetables. Same thing goes for many fruits, which are often the most tasty just before they rot.

There are good and bad sides to using a refrigerator. But in a very real sense, the rapid globalization of the food industry from the mid-1800s on has made having a refrigerator at home--not to mention those massive walls of cold storage at the supermarket --a necessity. The food we buy comes from all over the world, partially because we demand greater variety than our great-great-grandparents, but more significantly because the cheapest places to grow produce, milk cows and slaughter chickens are quite often very far away from where those products are eventually consumed. Keeping all that food edible as it crosses land and sea on the way to your dinner table necessarily involves keeping it cold.

There is only one alternative, and it's a throwback to the days before the Monitor Top: Buy local. This might be perfectly plausible for farmers and environmentalists, but for average people, exclusively eating food grown within a 20-kilometre radius of your house is inconvenient and culinarily limiting.

"Nothing is as pure or natural as we'd like," writes Freidberg at the end of Fresh. This is very true -- who wouldn't want a glass of freshly milked milk and a couple of just-hatched eggs in the morning? Alas, those items aren't on the menu.

Refrigeration doesn't mean freshness -- not by a long shot. But at least it allows us to eat the food we want, when we want it. This is, I suppose, the next best thing to slapping a juicy steak cut from a newly slaughtered cow on the grill at supper time.

ygoldstein@nationalpost.com