冷冻食物二三事
Food is delicious, not to mention kind of important for life. But food also goes bad, so humans have invented many ways to preserve it to eat later or far from where it was harvested. Some of these methods require unhealthy chemicals or degrade the food's nutritional value. But luckily, freezing can preserve food with most of its nutrients, well, frozen in place.
食物很美味，更别说对生命来讲有些重要。但食物也会坏掉，所以人类发明出许多方法来将食物保存起来，好能稍后再吃或在离产地很远的地方吃。这之中有些方法需要不健康的化学物质，或者会降低食物营养价值。不过幸好，冷冻可以将食物和其中多数营养保存起来，这个嘛，把营养好好地冻起来。
The important part is that most chemical and biological processes run slower at lower temperatures, which means that if you cool food a lot, enzymes and bacteria and fungi in the food get too cold to decompose it. That's why food lasts longer in the freezer than in the fridge than on the counter. Freezing, however, wasn't always an easy task, especially before fridges were invented. It's not that freezing food is a new idea—I mean, people who live in cold places have done it by default for thousands of years. But things got messy when we started creating artificial winter to freeze food in warmer climates.
重要的部分是，大多数化学和生物过程在较低的温度下会进行得比较慢，那就代表如果你将食物大幅冷却，食物里的酵素和细菌以及真菌就会冷到没办法使食物腐坏。那就是为什么食物在冷冻库保存得比在冰箱和流理柜上久。然而，冷冻并不一直是一项简单的任务，特别是在冰箱被发明出来前。不是说将食物冷冻起来是个新点子－－我的意思是，住在寒冷地区的人们几千年来就只能这么做。不过当我们开始在比较温暖的气候里打造人造寒冬来冷冻食物时，事情就变得麻烦了。
Early freezers were basically rooms full of salty ice, which, while they could freeze food, took many hours or even days to do so. A slow freeze gives fluid within cells the time to stack up into big ice crystals. Since water expands when it freezes, the sharp edges of these crystals poke holes through the walls of the cells, and when the food thaws, the fluid leaks out. Gross! Even grosser? Birds' eyes. Clarence Birdseye, to be precise.
早期的冷冻库基本上是装满洒盐冰块的房间，那种房间，虽然它们可以冷冻食物，但却要花上好几个小时，甚至是好几天来这样做。速度缓慢的结冻过程让细胞内的液体有时间结成大冰晶。由于水在结冻时会膨胀，这些结晶的锐利边缘会戳破细胞壁，而当食物解冻时，那液体就会渗出来。恶!更恶心的？鸟类的眼睛。确切地说，Clarence Birdseye。
An American entrepreneur who lived in Arctic Canada in the nineteen-teens, Birdseye noticed that when Inuit people went ice fishing in minus-40 degree windy conditions, their catch froze almost immediately. When cooked later, the fish tasted fresh. Birdseye realized that the Arctic frozen foods were tasty because they froze quickly and formed smaller ice crystals that didn't damage the cells. Inspired, he went on to develop a process to quickly freeze food by pressing small packages between metal plates chilled to 40 below zero. Combined with clever marketing, this allowed Birdseye to bring Arctic winter to the rest of the world and to almost single-handedly jump-start the modern market for frozen foods.
一位 1913 至 1919 年间居住在加拿大极地的美国创业家，Birdseye 他注意到当因纽特人在负四十度颳风的情况下去冰钓时，他们的渔获几乎是马上结冻。过一阵子被拿来煮时，鱼尝起来很新鲜。Birdseye 发现北极冷冻食物很好吃，因为它们快速结冻并形成不会破坏细胞的较小冰晶。受到启发，他开始研发能快速冷冻食物的方法，那冷冻方法是靠将一包包小包裹塞进冷冻到零下四十度的金属板间。结合聪明的行销，这让 Birdseye 得以将北极的冬天带到世界其它地方，且几乎只手开启了现代冷冻食物市场。
You probably even have your own freezer, a marvelous device cold enough to quick-freeze almost any food you put in it. In other words, the North Pole—in your kitchen.
你搞不好甚至有自己的冷冻库，一个冷到可以快速结冻几乎你放进去的任何食物的神奇设备。换句话说就是，北极－－在你家厨房里。
评论
打印
