0:11

Hello everyone and welcome to Talk

0:13

Nerdy. Today is Monday, June 17,

0:16

2024 and I'm the host of the show,

0:18

Dr. Cara Santa Maria. And

0:22

before we dive into this week's episode,

0:25

I want to apologize for the sort

0:27

of late posting of this week's episode.

0:30

You may actually not be getting this

0:32

on Monday, June 17th. It

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may be Tuesday, June 18th where

0:37

you are. It's been a pretty

0:40

intense week at work and personally and

0:42

sometimes I'm late and I'm so so

0:44

sorry about that but I promise I

0:47

have a fascinating show for you. So

0:50

before we get into the weeds, I do

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want to thank those of you who make

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Talk Nerdy possible each and every week. Your

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to learn more. All

1:35

right, this week I had the

1:37

opportunity to speak with the author

1:40

of a new book called Frostbite-

1:42

How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our

1:44

Planet, and Ourselves. Nicola

1:47

Twilly is the co-author of another

1:49

book, Until Proven Safe- The History

1:51

and Future of Quarantine, and

1:54

she's also the co-host of Gastropod, the

1:56

award-winning and popular podcast that looks at

1:58

food through the lens. of science

2:00

and history, which is produced as part

2:03

of the Vox Media podcast network in

2:05

partnership with Eater. And she's

2:07

also a frequent contributor to The New

2:09

Yorker. So without any

2:11

further ado, here she is,

2:13

the author of Frostbite, how

2:15

refrigeration changed our food, our

2:17

planet, and ourselves, Nicola

2:20

Twilly. Well,

2:22

Nikki, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank

2:25

you for having me. So

2:27

I am excited to talk about your

2:30

new book, Frostbite, how refrigeration changed our

2:32

food, our planet, and ourselves. And as

2:34

I often do on the show, before

2:37

we dive into the book itself, I'd

2:39

love to talk a little bit about

2:41

you and your work, maybe some of

2:44

your previous

2:46

writing, your podcasting, and

2:49

really just how you got

2:51

involved in this kind of media

2:54

landscape. It's such a funny thing now because

2:56

if somebody asks you, what do you do

2:58

for a living? How do

3:00

you describe yourself? What's your title? I usually

3:02

laugh. I

3:09

mean, honestly, at this point,

3:11

I guess I'm a writer and a podcaster.

3:13

That's what I say. And

3:15

fortunately nowadays, you don't have to then

3:17

explain what a podcast is. There's a

3:19

time where you did. But

3:23

yeah, writer and podcaster. And the

3:25

podcasting thing I never saw coming,

3:27

but I was on

3:30

a writing fellowship, Michael Pollan's

3:35

writing fellowship, food informing writing fellowship

3:37

at UC Berkeley. And

3:39

one of my fellow fellows was

3:41

Cynthia Graber. And

3:44

we stayed in touch. And

3:46

she was both a writer and

3:48

had worked in radio for years.

3:53

And it's a very long story, but I

3:55

was having a terrible, terrible morning one morning.

3:57

And she was like, well, I have this thing. to try

4:00

and get your advice on it, maybe it's not a good

4:02

time." I was like, just send it over. It

4:06

was a proposal for a

4:08

new podcast about food science and

4:10

history. I looked at it

4:12

and I was like, well, you need a

4:14

co-host and

4:17

it should be me. I feel

4:21

like it was a little out of

4:23

character. It's

4:25

not like I'm some shy, retiring person,

4:27

but this was the very take-no-prisoners version.

4:30

Right. I was very bold, very brave.

4:33

And she

4:35

said, sure, yeah, that's a

4:38

great idea. And so

4:40

I turned myself into a podcaster really

4:42

because I was in a bad mood.

4:47

And how long do you think it took you to sort

4:49

of get your legs? It's an interesting

4:52

thing. I mean, obviously

4:54

I was like, well, I listened to podcasts. I

4:56

already know everything. What

4:59

could be so hard? And

5:02

if Cynthia was listening to me

5:05

right now, she would be laughing her

5:07

ass off because it's

5:10

very different. It's

5:12

just a very different way

5:14

of storytelling and reporting and

5:17

using your voice. And

5:20

I mean, you know that, but I had

5:22

to learn it. And yeah, I

5:25

didn't realize I was going to have to learn it

5:27

either. So I didn't go in with the mentality of

5:29

like, oh, I'm going to need to learn a

5:31

whole new set of skills. So it

5:33

was a steep curve. But

5:37

there you go. But also,

5:39

I think kind of an

5:41

amazing thing to do because you

5:44

bring that sort of new way

5:47

of reporting and thinking about

5:49

structure and voice and storytelling, you bring

5:52

it back to your writing. So it's very

5:54

enriching actually to have to

5:56

learn those new skills. I just

5:58

didn't realize how much hard work. it was going to be. Right.

6:02

So tell us a little bit about Gastropod

6:04

for those who don't listen or who are

6:06

looking for something new to subscribe to. Yeah.

6:10

So, Gastropod is my pride

6:12

and joy. It comes

6:16

out every other week. We

6:18

look at food through the lens of science

6:20

and history. That's our tagline. And

6:23

topics will vary from, I

6:27

don't know, what people eat

6:29

in the Arctic to the

6:32

history of restaurant acoustics

6:34

and why restaurants are so loud

6:36

and the science there. So

6:41

we do sort of tackle

6:43

one topic every couple of weeks. We

6:45

go deep. We interview a bunch

6:47

of guests. We're making an episode

6:50

on food allergies right now. Ton

6:52

of fascinating history and science there.

6:55

So it's, and

6:57

sometimes we'll take a topic

6:59

like that. Sometimes we'll take a

7:02

single food item. The history and science are

7:04

the bagel or the doughnut or, you know.

7:07

And yeah, we have a lot of

7:09

fun with it. It kind

7:12

of feels like we become

7:14

subject matter experts on a whole

7:16

new thing every two weeks. That's

7:18

my favorite thing because

7:21

it's always a process of

7:23

discovery and figuring things out and

7:25

yeah, learning. And

7:28

for a long time you've been interested in

7:31

learning, especially with this sort of

7:33

history and science lens you've been

7:35

writing for some time. Has this

7:38

always been the focus of your

7:40

career, writing, and then obviously now

7:42

this new medium? No. It

7:44

took me a really long time to figure out what

7:47

I wanted to do or rather what I could

7:49

do and be paid to do.

7:53

So I mean, I

7:56

originally thought maybe academia might be the

7:59

path, but... I hate being

8:02

tied down to one discipline. So that

8:06

really didn't suit me. I did

8:08

an undergrad, I went and enrolled in

8:10

a PhD program and I immediately wanted

8:13

to change after the Masters and

8:15

I realized, oh, that's just me. I don't

8:17

like this structure. So I like going deep,

8:23

but I don't like going ever

8:25

deeper in a single discipline. Yeah. So

8:28

to the point where they always say

8:30

what you know, at the beginning,

8:32

you know a little bit about a lot

8:34

and by the end of a PhD, you

8:36

know a whole lot about very, very little.

8:38

Exactly. And we need those people. It's just

8:40

not me. And so

8:43

then I thought, well, maybe I would,

8:45

it seemed like people

8:47

who worked for museums had

8:49

a lot of fun. They got to, you know, curate

8:53

exhibitions and events and learn things.

8:56

So I tried that for a while and I, a

9:01

decade really actually. And I had a lot of fun

9:04

with some of that too. I got to work on

9:06

Ben Franklin's

9:08

300th birthday celebrations, which

9:10

was really fun. Years.

9:13

Random and awesome. Very, I mean, I

9:15

was living in Philly at the time,

9:17

so he is like the man. And

9:20

what was funny about his,

9:22

because I didn't go to school in the

9:24

US. I didn't grow up here. I'm not,

9:27

I'm my parents are British. And

9:29

so I really hadn't, I didn't know

9:31

a lot about Benjamin Franklin. I mean,

9:34

I hadn't really come across him at

9:36

all. And so I, it was

9:39

this, I kept being like, have you heard of

9:41

this guy? He's amazing. He'd followed up the

9:43

whole alphabet and he did this thing

9:45

with lightning and did it and everyone

9:47

was like, Oh my God. I

9:53

remember watching the Ken Burns documentary about him and

9:55

learning also, like he was such a culture, critic

10:00

and also hilariously, he didn't spend that much time

10:02

in the US either. Wasn't he in Paris?

10:04

Yeah, Paris and London. Yeah.

10:09

No, he's definitely, I mean, it's

10:12

not like I'm a big founding father, Stan

10:16

in general, but I feel like if

10:18

you had to pick one, he's your man because

10:21

he's just more fun. I mean, total

10:23

flirt. But he

10:25

had a sense of humor, he had a sense

10:27

of curiosity. He was in touch

10:29

with fascinating people, he tried his hand at

10:32

everything. One of the

10:34

little Easter eggs in Frostbite, my book actually is,

10:37

Ben Franklin comes up a bunch of times.

10:41

It's like my little secret tribute

10:43

that I thought no one was going to notice, but

10:45

now I'm telling the whole world. Well,

10:50

the whole world doesn't listen to the show, but

10:52

yes, the class out of the bag. He

10:56

electrocuted Turkey as a way of killing it,

10:59

and that comes up in the chapter on

11:01

how we have to electrocute

11:03

our meat carcasses because they cool

11:06

down too slowly, and so they

11:08

stiffen up. So

11:10

Ben Franklin has a weird shout out, and that's

11:12

not the only one there, a couple. I

11:15

love that because I was literally about to

11:17

say it's sort of a far cry from

11:19

Ben Franklin to like food science in history,

11:21

but clearly there are threads. No, no, no,

11:23

no. I try

11:26

to work Ben in everywhere. I

11:28

was writing a New Yorker article

11:30

about indoor air pollution, and

11:33

there's a Ben Franklin quote in there about

11:35

he was sharing a bed

11:37

with Alexander Hamilton, which sounds like

11:40

I'm setting up a comedy. Wow, right? Social

11:43

kitchen. Yeah. But

11:45

they were staying in an inn, and Alexander

11:47

Hamilton wanted the window closed because he

11:49

thought they would catch their death

11:52

of coal, and

11:55

Ben Franklin was like, no, the air within

11:57

is worse for us than the air outside.

12:00

So again, ahead of his time. Totally.

12:02

Yeah. It was like so much truth on

12:04

that. That's fascinating. I'm

12:07

curious. As you moved into writing

12:09

as a career and looking

12:15

through this lens that you look through,

12:19

what was it about, or what is

12:21

it, I should say, about food

12:24

that speaks to you so much? Yeah.

12:28

I wish I could say I arrived at that on

12:31

my own, but actually it was

12:33

my husband who was like, why don't you

12:36

write about food? It combines everything you love.

12:39

You get to write about design and

12:41

art and science and history

12:46

and sensory things

12:48

and other species and what they

12:50

do. Everything, I

12:52

wanted to find something

12:57

that was a productive

12:59

constraint. You

13:02

know what I mean? Something that kept

13:04

my attention focused enough. But

13:07

being the person I am, I was like,

13:09

I hate all constraints. Everything is too constraining.

13:12

I was really wrestling with what I would

13:14

write about, and he was

13:16

like, food, it's obviously food. I

13:20

love food, but it's

13:22

not like I was the world's greatest cook

13:25

or had a background in it at all.

13:27

It just was something that allowed

13:30

me to, it's

13:32

a lens, it allowed me to

13:34

go in all these different directions

13:37

while still feeling coherent. It's

13:40

fascinating even just the process that

13:42

you described about looking for

13:46

a helpful constraint but

13:48

also not wanting to

13:50

be constrained. I've

13:54

long thought that that is

13:56

so necessary for human ingenuity

13:58

and human creativity. is that

14:01

when there's no constraints whatsoever,

14:04

it's sort of like nothing is real

14:06

anymore. You know, like I often think

14:08

about these psychological tests for

14:12

creativity, which is like the hardest construct in the world

14:14

to measure. And I remember

14:17

talking about this with some colleagues and it's like, you

14:19

give a kid a pile of paper clips and you

14:21

say, what can you make with this? And,

14:25

you know, yeah, anybody can go

14:27

like, look, it's an airplane, but

14:29

it's like, no, that's a pile of paper

14:31

clips. Like, you got to make it into

14:33

an airplane. And

14:36

so I often think about that, like when there are rules,

14:39

even if they're minimal, even if

14:41

they're wiggly, when

14:44

there's something imposed upon you, and

14:46

now you have to operate within

14:48

that constraint, it can

14:51

guide so much fascinating

14:53

creativity. 100%,

14:55

I think it's the key. And yet I

14:58

was having a very hard time applying

15:00

it to myself. So

15:04

yeah, my advice is, you

15:06

know, find a great husband who will do

15:09

that for you or partner. And

15:13

so food, right? Okay, he's like, food

15:16

is it, this is gonna be the

15:18

thing. And then from food, you got

15:20

to refrigeration. And so how did that

15:23

transition or that, I

15:25

don't want to call it a leap, but that evolution take place. Yeah,

15:29

I mean, there's lots of many,

15:31

many fascinating topics within food,

15:34

obviously. That's why, I mean, we come up

15:36

with a new episode every two weeks for

15:38

Gastropod. But what

15:40

was happening at the time, and this gives you a

15:42

sense of how long I've been working on this book,

15:45

was that everyone was talking about

15:47

farm to tables. This is a very

15:49

early 2010s. And

15:52

you know, Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser,

15:54

there's just been, Alice Waters, this

15:57

whole kind of national dialogue.

15:59

about farm to table and

16:02

I don't know if you remember it,

16:04

that was sort of in the air

16:06

at the time. Oh yeah, like every

16:08

new restaurant was a farm to table

16:10

restaurant and it was very chic. Yes,

16:12

it was very chic. It was everywhere.

16:15

And a lot of people were talking

16:17

and writing about what was happening on

16:20

farms. I mentioned Michael Pollan,

16:22

I mean that's the classic example of

16:24

like, oh wow, this is

16:26

how our food is raised. And

16:30

so that was all very inspiring

16:32

and fascinating to me. But

16:34

being the kind of person that I am, I was like,

16:36

well, what about the

16:38

two? There's farm, there's

16:41

table, there's a word in

16:43

here that's what's happening in

16:46

between. And so

16:48

I started looking into that thinking,

16:51

okay, there's, you know, maybe there's

16:53

some interesting mileage

16:55

to be gotten out of sort of

16:58

the logic of logistics or things like

17:00

that. And then I realized, oh wow,

17:03

we have built this whole mostly

17:05

invisible network of synthetic

17:08

winter for our food to live

17:10

in and I need to

17:12

go visit these places and see what they look

17:14

like. And so that's how that happened. Oh,

17:20

I love that. And it's a whole

17:22

fascinating, you're right, like parallel world that

17:27

we talk about, like, oh, you don't

17:29

want to see how the sausage is

17:32

made. Like there's this whole like system

17:34

in place for so many aspects of

17:36

our lives, especially as they relate to,

17:38

I think, creature comforts to

17:41

ease of living that we

17:44

take for granted very often in the

17:46

West or in higher income countries. And

17:49

just in general, we take for granted

17:51

that there's almost a magic, but really

17:54

that's a lot of like blood, sweat

17:56

and tears. There's

17:58

a second, facet to

18:00

this, which I want to dive

18:02

into weirdly first and then get

18:04

into some of the brass tacks,

18:07

which is I live in a

18:09

world of science and skepticism. I live

18:11

in an academic world. But

18:14

I also work as a clinical

18:16

psychologist. And so I

18:19

also live in the real world where people

18:21

are, people with thoughts and feelings and beliefs

18:23

and all of those things. And

18:26

I'm very constructivist in my approach and I

18:28

want to understand where people are coming from,

18:30

yada, yada. I also live in Los Angeles.

18:33

And living in Los Angeles, there's

18:35

a lot of woo. And it's

18:37

fascinating to me, this

18:40

thing that I notice a lot when

18:43

it comes to science and technology, especially

18:45

as it relates to our food and

18:47

maybe our medicine also to some extent,

18:50

but food, it feels like it takes the

18:52

brunt of it. Where there's an innate fear

18:56

and an innate

18:59

anti-technological kind

19:03

of approach that really

19:07

falls victim to the quote naturalistic

19:09

fallacy, right? That if we do

19:11

anything to adulterate, if we do

19:13

anything to alter, if we preserve,

19:15

if we freeze, if we refrigerate,

19:18

somehow we are nutritionally depriving ourselves

19:20

and some as if being able

19:22

to make food last longer is

19:24

not a boon for the planet.

19:26

And so I'm super curious, even

19:29

before we get into some of the history about that

19:32

balance and that investigation that

19:34

you made into the good,

19:37

the bad, the ugly and the

19:39

fear and the excitement and the

19:43

techno-optimism and some of the

19:45

technophobia about not just

19:47

refrigeration, but yet preserving our food. That's

19:50

such a great question. So yeah,

19:52

I mean, first of all, I mean, preserving

19:55

food is one of the

19:57

central activities of humanity. for

20:00

all of human history. I

20:03

mean, that, you know, along with sort

20:05

of running away from things that wanted

20:07

to eat us and, you

20:09

know, reproducing and so on, possibly

20:13

making the odd cave painting here and there,

20:15

we tried to make our

20:17

food last, to

20:22

store it, to hoard it. There's evidence of,

20:24

you know, paleolithic people

20:26

using snow pits to preserve

20:28

their mammoth, you know, hole,

20:34

putting bones in caves to

20:36

save the bone marrow for

20:38

later. So this idea

20:40

that we could, that

20:44

trying to preserve food is

20:46

somehow unnatural, is,

20:49

I mean, it's at the core of humanity.

20:52

It's, you know, there's this amazing quote

20:54

by an Italian author that says, preserving

20:57

food is anxiety in its

20:59

purest form. But I think,

21:01

you know, it's one of our most

21:03

pressing concerns throughout history.

21:06

A vast amount of human ingenuity has

21:08

been devoted to it. So, you

21:11

know, we're basically been fighting this

21:13

millennia long interspecies war with

21:16

the microbes and fungi that want to

21:18

eat our food before we can. And

21:21

so, you know, we've got,

21:23

we develop smoking and drying, and

21:25

then also these very sophisticated methods

21:27

like fermentation. And

21:29

so, refrigeration is just

21:32

a long, you know, just the

21:34

sort of one of the latest, not

21:37

even the end of the ways that we will

21:39

figure out how to do that. What's

21:41

interesting is, you know, I sort of, I

21:45

think there's this often very black and

21:47

white attitude toward food, like good or

21:49

bad. Is it good or bad? Exactly.

21:52

Healthy or not. Healthy or unhealthy. Yeah,

21:54

exactly. And I think, you know, I've

21:56

done, I've talked about this book, I've

21:59

been talking, I'm a woman. woman monologue about this book

22:01

to be honest. But

22:03

I've been talking about it for

22:06

nearly a decade at this point because that's how long I've

22:08

been working on it. And people

22:10

always say, oh, so you're against

22:12

refrigeration then. Like, is my fridge

22:14

bad? Should I get rid of my... And I'm like,

22:17

no, I'm not about to get rid

22:19

of my fridge. Absolutely not.

22:23

The point is refrigeration

22:25

is a technology. We implemented

22:27

it in a certain way.

22:29

Isn't it time to have

22:31

a look at the food

22:33

system that has

22:35

created and whether we would

22:37

like to optimize for something

22:39

else instead? Could we do better?

22:42

It has costs as well as

22:44

benefits. So can we do anything

22:47

about those costs? And so,

22:49

yeah, I think it's not

22:51

like, oh, I'm against refrigeration. I think

22:54

it's just that if you think...

22:57

It's so ubiquitous and

23:00

built into our food system now

23:02

and essentially invisible that people don't

23:04

think of it as a thing

23:06

that you can question or imagine

23:09

alternatives to. And yet

23:11

it's really recent and it

23:13

really has had huge impacts on

23:15

everything from what we eat

23:18

to where it's grown to how good it is for

23:20

us and the planet. And so

23:22

why not take a look at that? It's

23:25

true. We don't often think not just about

23:27

the downstream effects, but also about the ones

23:29

that occur then upstream as

23:31

a part of a feedback

23:33

loop when we have a

23:35

disruptive technology like that, that

23:37

we end up building systems

23:39

to match the technology as

23:42

opposed to the technology continuing

23:44

to adapt to our systems.

23:46

And I think even further than

23:48

that, this sort of black

23:51

and white thinking, this good versus bad

23:53

thinking, I worry that it underlies

23:57

a lot of kind of dangerous public health.

23:59

I mean, again, I'm biased because I live

24:01

in Los Angeles and I have friends who

24:03

I think make terrible decisions for their health

24:05

out of fear of kind of modern science.

24:14

And so, you know, let's say

24:17

somebody is really grappling ethically

24:21

with factory farming, which is

24:23

a completely legitimate. You

24:25

should be. Yes, in fact. They should be.

24:27

And in

24:29

the process of that, they become

24:31

caught up in a series

24:34

of negotiations that

24:37

end with a full

24:39

throwing out of the baby with the

24:41

bathwater where now, like, I have a

24:43

friend who literally drinks raw milk. And

24:46

I'm like, no, let's not do that.

24:50

And that's the part where it's that, like,

24:52

the extremes, like you mentioned. Yeah. You know,

24:54

and now pasteurization is evil and now all

24:56

of these other things are evil. And now

24:58

the only way to do this in an

25:00

ethical way is to do it actually in

25:02

a way that goes back

25:04

to a public health crisis

25:07

when people were dying

25:10

of very preventable infectious diseases.

25:13

Right. Right. It's, you know,

25:15

I think it is. It's

25:17

tough, like holding that nuance

25:19

in your mind and not

25:21

having a right or wrong

25:23

answer to things and having

25:25

life be the sort

25:28

of messy business of compromise that

25:30

it is and where you really

25:32

do have to make context dependent

25:34

decisions all the time, which is

25:36

very tiring. I

25:38

can understand why you just sort of, yeah,

25:43

throw the baby out with the bathwater, as you say. But

25:45

it's, I mean, yeah,

25:47

I hope, I hope anyone

25:51

who reads this book or listens

25:53

to Gastropod will understand that it's

25:55

not, it's never yes or no.

25:59

I mean, to be honest, honest, it's no

26:01

with factory-farmed food. But it's

26:06

never this sort of black and white

26:08

discussion, and there are reasons why things

26:10

happen. The trick

26:12

is to interrogate those and

26:14

see what you think about them, and whether

26:17

you support them and make decisions

26:19

accordingly. Right. So

26:21

thinking about something as, like

26:23

you said, ubiquitous as refrigeration.

26:26

I think most of the people right now

26:28

listening to this show have one

26:30

refrigerator, at least in their home.

26:34

If not in their home at their

26:36

place of business, it's something that they,

26:39

you don't think about until it breaks, or

26:42

until something goes wrong with it. But

26:45

this machine, this one

26:47

of our largest machines in our

26:49

homes, and of course, beyond

26:51

the home in the

26:55

food supply chain, in different

26:58

consumer facing restaurants and

27:03

shops, all over the place.

27:05

These machines contribute to a

27:07

pretty big existential crisis that

27:10

we're all facing,

27:14

don't they? Right. Yes.

27:16

The, the, the sad irony of

27:18

the fact that the,

27:20

the more artificial winter we

27:23

build, the, the less actual

27:25

winter we get. It's,

27:27

it's basically, you

27:30

know, there's no getting around it. The energy,

27:34

and perhaps even more

27:36

significantly the chemicals we use

27:38

in refrigerating machines, they're called refrigerants.

27:42

Those combined make refrigeration

27:45

one of the bigger causes of, of

27:51

global warming, climate change, and

27:55

one of the big, fastest growing ones too, because

27:57

the thing you also have to remember is that

28:00

while the United States has this enormous

28:03

cold chain that, by the way, is

28:06

still expanding, actually at a very rapid

28:08

rate. Due to

28:10

shifts in how we consume food, the

28:12

delivery world has led

28:15

to the construction of a vast

28:17

number of new refrigerated warehouses, as

28:20

has the expansion of the Panama Canal.

28:22

Well, so shifts in the logistics landscape.

28:25

But so the US one is

28:28

already gigantic, still growing. Much

28:31

of what

28:34

we could call the developing

28:36

world, much of that doesn't have

28:38

any cold chain at all, and they're

28:40

planning to build it. And so

28:42

if that happens,

28:45

as currently it is, I

28:48

mean, one expert told me,

28:50

well, if everyone has a US-style cold

28:53

chain, there won't be a harvest to

28:55

put in it, because climate change will have made

28:57

sure of that. So it

28:59

is an existential dilemma, people

29:03

point out and correctly, that the

29:06

cold chain prevents a lot of food waste. And

29:09

food waste is a huge cause of carbon

29:13

emissions, climate

29:15

change emissions. It's one of the biggest, the

29:18

US, China, and then if global food waste

29:20

was a country, it would be third. That

29:23

argument is that refrigeration

29:25

doesn't prevent food waste on

29:28

the way from the farm to the

29:30

store, but it actually

29:32

just seems to shift where that food waste

29:34

takes place because the United States,

29:36

the food waste is all happening

29:39

at the consumer level. So it used

29:41

to be a third of food was

29:43

wasted, went bad before it even

29:46

reached the store. Now it's,

29:48

oh, we throw away a third of

29:50

all food. We buy it and

29:52

we throw it away, or restaurants throw it

29:54

away, or the supermarket throws it away. So

29:56

it's just shifted where that waste happens. It

29:58

hasn't prevented it. Right.

30:01

This sort of almost marketing

30:05

of mitigation

30:08

of food waste is

30:10

more to me sounds like a

30:12

post hoc reasoning than something that

30:14

was a priori built in to

30:17

trying to mitigate food waste, which I may

30:20

be wrong, but so much of that, doesn't

30:22

it just have to do with planning? The

30:29

planning how? I mean,

30:31

two things in response to what

30:33

you're saying. First of all, when refrigeration

30:37

really got started in the US, actually

30:40

preventing food waste was a big

30:42

part of the deal.

30:44

That really was I mean, the

30:46

context is for the

30:48

first time, there are more that, you know,

30:51

the cities are really big. People are

30:53

moving to cities. Cities

30:55

of above a million inhabitants start

30:57

to be, you know, common.

31:00

And feeding cities that

31:03

are that big without

31:06

a cold chain is really hard. And

31:09

so there was relying on just

31:11

like canning. Oh, well, no, I

31:13

mean, actually, it's kind of

31:16

it's kind of amazing. I mean, the animals

31:18

kind of were brought

31:20

to the city to be slaughtered. Including

31:24

herding turkeys into cities. You can

31:26

imagine how if you've ever tried to

31:29

herd a flock of birds, how

31:31

well that went. Some

31:33

actually lived in the cities. So

31:35

in London, there were entire dairies

31:38

filled with milking cows that were

31:40

kept in basements underneath the strand.

31:43

So Central Park used to be full of

31:45

pigs. It

31:48

was I mean, and it was tough. I

31:51

mean, no, you know, having a feeding

31:55

a city without refrigeration is

31:57

undoubtedly very tricky. So

32:00

that was the

32:02

primary concern when in

32:04

the late 1700s, there

32:07

were scientific committees set up to

32:09

study this problem. Actually, what

32:11

was fascinating is most of them thought that refrigeration

32:13

wasn't going to be the answer. There

32:15

was a big fad for jerked

32:18

food and what

32:20

they thought of as like a jerky, like

32:22

a dried reconstitutable

32:27

meat products. It was

32:29

big turn off food. Exactly. People

32:32

tried various injections

32:35

and coatings. So

32:37

there were a whole lot of them and it

32:39

was the big scientific question

32:42

of the day. How

32:44

shall we preserve enough food for

32:46

our urban dwellers? So yeah,

32:48

it was and it

32:50

was designed to really solve that problem.

32:53

What no one anticipated is that once

32:56

you had this seasonless abundance in

32:58

stores, well then

33:00

consumers would just start throwing it away. Yeah,

33:03

that really sounds like it was a tipping point

33:05

is going from insecurity and

33:07

a need to ensure that there

33:09

is enough to, like you said,

33:11

an abundance and this kind of

33:15

embarrassment of riches. I

33:17

think this idea psychologically that the

33:20

refrigerator will keep it good. So

33:23

it takes

33:26

off the part of

33:28

the anxiety that should be there in your brain

33:30

about, I have to eat this

33:32

before it goes bad because now it's

33:34

in your fridge. It

33:38

seems like a

33:40

nice safety net

33:42

and then it does go bad because the fridge is

33:44

not, it

33:47

doesn't guarantee immortality, it just

33:50

prolongs the window

33:52

you have to eat something in. So yeah, I

33:54

think for a lot of people it sort of

33:56

functions as this clean, cold,

34:00

trash can. It does.

34:02

I think even more than that is the freezer.

34:06

It's like, oh, it's going to go back in the fridge. Just throw it in

34:08

the freezer. It'll never

34:10

expire. Yeah.

34:15

So it's an

34:17

interesting psychological problem. I talked to a bunch

34:19

of fridge designers for

34:21

the book. It's

34:24

very interesting. They try and tackle this.

34:28

But consumers don't really

34:30

care. And supermarkets definitely

34:32

don't care. People

34:34

sort of, so they'll introduce the

34:36

smart fridge that will tell you what's

34:38

going bad. They've not, I mean, they

34:41

told me, they've noticed. People really don't

34:44

care, actually. It's not that they,

34:46

you know, it's not, I mean, they feel

34:48

a sense of guilt, but

34:50

actually it's not that we don't know that

34:53

things will go bad in our fridge. It's that it

34:55

allows us to sort of put it out of our

34:58

minds. Right. Close the door, not

35:00

see it, not think about it. You

35:02

know, it's in a crisper drawer. It's at the bottom.

35:04

It's fine. The drawers, the drawers

35:07

don't help, they hide. Do

35:12

you know what I feel bad

35:14

about? What causes me that kind

35:16

of uncomfortable guilt is when

35:18

I'm in a bodega, a

35:20

convenience store, or even one of these large

35:22

grocery stores, and there's open refrigeration. Should I

35:25

be feeling as bad as I do about

35:27

that? Is that really horrible? Because it feels

35:29

like it's really horrible. Oh, yeah, it's really

35:31

horrible. And actually, in a lot of places,

35:35

I mean, many European

35:37

countries have actually banned them.

35:39

So you will find everything

35:41

behind glass now, and you have

35:43

to open a door to get stuff.

35:46

And retailers hate it. They say that it

35:48

limits their sales because people

35:51

somehow opening a glass door will,

35:55

it provides enough of a barrier to

35:57

prevent people from just grabbing stuff. And

36:01

so they say it really puts a dent

36:03

in their sales and a dent that is

36:05

big enough to overcome the energy savings of

36:08

Having the door Wow So

36:11

that's amazing. Yeah, I know again

36:13

people, you know, we're weird But

36:16

of course in the grand scheme

36:18

of things when you look at all of

36:20

these sort of externalized costs Probably

36:23

buying a lot of food on impulse is

36:25

one of the quickest way to have food

36:27

waste to have food that you don't end

36:29

up Eating and that it's a bad it

36:32

undoubtedly even worse than the open

36:34

grocery store refrigerated shelves. Yes They're

36:37

both bad, but but together they're

36:39

they're terribly bad Yeah

36:43

so we talked about some

36:45

of the good we talked about this

36:47

this cold chain that Didn't

36:50

exist and and some of the ways that our

36:52

cities were very different than they are now because

36:54

of the cold chain Yeah, and

36:57

people's diets were very limited in

36:59

winter. I mean there was a sort of

37:01

period where stored root

37:04

vegetables People refer

37:06

to it as the interminable coleslaw

37:08

of winter So, I

37:11

mean you were just if you you

37:13

ate what you had canned and preserved in the summer

37:16

but things Things

37:18

were a little on fun until

37:20

you know, the next

37:22

harvest came around So it definitely

37:25

and if you were poor and in the

37:27

city good luck to you I mean getting

37:29

hold of fresh food and the and the

37:31

nutrients you do need so Hat

37:35

does refrigeration change the nutritional value of food

37:38

like how much of that is myth and

37:40

how much of that is legitimate Yeah,

37:43

that's a great question and very a

37:45

very tough one. So I

37:48

spend some time in the book trying to

37:50

tease out the health impact of refrigeration because

37:52

you know people care about that and it

37:55

Is important and it is much

37:57

harder to untangle than you would think And

38:00

ultimately, it does seem as though

38:04

much produce has lost

38:09

some nutrient value. So

38:12

things will have lower levels

38:15

of vitamins than they did in

38:17

the past. That seems to scientifically

38:20

be true, although hard to get

38:22

a baseline on it because we

38:24

haven't been measuring vitamins for very

38:26

long. And we really don't have

38:28

a baseline on any of the

38:30

things like phytonutrients because I'm

38:34

talking about things like, I don't

38:36

know, lycopene in

38:38

tomatoes. Things like

38:40

that where they are

38:43

increasingly understood to have health benefits, but

38:45

they're not something where there's a recommended

38:47

daily allowance where the government says you have

38:49

to get a certain amount for your health.

38:52

So we really don't have measurements going

38:54

back in history of how much

38:56

lycopene was in our tomatoes.

39:00

But with all those caveats, yes, it

39:03

does seem that nutrient

39:05

levels in produce, especially,

39:07

have diminished. And

39:09

the leading theory for why is because

39:12

that produce has been

39:15

bred for shipability. Yeah,

39:18

it's got to be sturdy enough to stand up to the cold

39:20

chain. And the classic example

39:22

of this, and it's something I spend a lot

39:24

of time with in the book, is the

39:27

tomato, which has entirely

39:29

been bred for its ability

39:32

to stand up to handling

39:35

in the cold chain and refrigerated

39:37

warehouses, and as a result,

39:39

taste of nothing. And as it

39:41

turns out, the very

39:43

substances that make a tomato

39:46

taste good also turn out

39:48

to be linked to much

39:50

higher levels of all the nutrients. So

39:53

a healthier tomato is

39:56

a tastier tomato, and that

39:58

has been bred out of them cold-chain

40:00

reasons. So yeah, I think

40:02

you can. It's a, you

40:05

know, I don't know that all the science is

40:07

there to make it a slam dunk case, but

40:10

I ended up pretty convinced that breeding

40:14

for these cold-chain resilient

40:16

foods has definitely

40:18

diminished their nutrient content.

40:22

It's interesting because then I feel like if

40:24

you broaden out

40:27

your resolution that much more

40:29

and you say, okay, the

40:32

giving, right, the reduction in

40:34

nutritional value, is it

40:37

made up for, is it more than

40:39

made up for by the abundance now

40:41

of access that we have is one

40:43

of very nutritionally dense tomato, you know,

40:46

equivalent to the four less dense that

40:48

I now have access to. And that

40:50

you can have all of your bound

40:53

in January, right? But

40:55

there I say to you, well,

40:58

maybe if people were eating them,

41:01

but they're not. Right. And I

41:03

think one of the reasons people don't

41:05

eat that much fruit

41:08

and vegetable is because the grocery store

41:10

versions aren't that great. I mean,

41:13

they're not craveable the

41:16

way many of the snack foods that people

41:18

eat are. Whereas I,

41:20

I mean, this

41:23

always makes me sound so ridiculous. So I'm

41:25

just, but I'm going to say it anyway,

41:28

really good produce is

41:30

craveable. Like my own

41:33

terry tomatoes, when I pick them and they're hot

41:35

from the sun, I cannot stop

41:37

eating them. So I do

41:40

feel like, okay, maybe the

41:42

fact that our fruit and vegetables taste worse,

41:45

it means that we also eat

41:47

less of them. So sure,

41:50

they're available, but we're

41:52

not consuming them. So, you

41:54

know, that's another health implication. Yeah.

41:57

And I might argue that If

44:00

you put that in the refrigerator for four

44:02

days, at below 55 degrees, the cold will

44:04

alter its

44:08

DNA in such a way

44:10

that it loses the ability

44:12

to produce flavor. The

44:16

flavor it already has is there, but it

44:18

will not continue to ripen and develop flavor.

44:22

I do see why you might

44:25

not... I mean, post-harvest

44:28

specialists or the people who study

44:30

produce post-harvest, they call the fridge

44:32

the stone fruit killing zone. It

44:36

is not a happy place for your peach. And

44:39

so I live my peaches out

44:41

on the counter. Now on the other hand, meat,

44:44

dairy? No, of course not. I mean, you can

44:46

leave a little bit of butter out if you

44:49

want to have it spreadable, but for

44:53

actual sort of storage, no,

44:55

of course not. You

44:58

know what's an interesting one is

45:00

the way that we treat our eggs versus

45:03

the UK. Yeah, there is a

45:05

huge difference in the refrigeration, in the necessity

45:08

for refrigeration in the US versus the ability

45:10

to leave them at room temperature in many

45:12

European countries. It's not just that they put

45:14

their eggs on the shelf and we put

45:16

our eggs in the fridge. We have to

45:19

put our eggs in the fridge in the

45:21

US. Right, because we've washed off the coating.

45:25

And the reason we wash off the coating that

45:27

would allow... This coating that is

45:29

naturally there that would allow

45:31

you to keep your eggs out of the cold

45:34

chain, the reason we wash it

45:36

off is because of fear of salmonella. But

45:39

there is a vaccination for salmonella

45:42

and in the UK, chickens

45:44

are required to be vaccinated

45:47

against it. And so

45:49

actually it's perfectly safe to

45:52

keep your eggs unwashed and

45:55

out of the fridge in the UK and

45:57

also perfectly safe to eat your raw cookie

45:59

dough. unexpected

46:01

benefit. But the U.S. hasn't

46:03

made that mandatory. So that's the choice by the

46:06

federal government that we are all living

46:08

with. It's

46:10

an interesting cultural phenomenon where

46:13

because something is how it

46:15

has been since we've

46:18

started to make memories or

46:20

because something is normative within

46:22

a specific society, we

46:24

start to develop an

46:27

emotional valence, like you talked about

46:29

earlier, of good versus bad, of

46:31

right versus wrong. And those feelings

46:33

run very, very deep. Oh my

46:35

gosh. And so the way that

46:37

we, you know, I have a

46:39

lot of European friends who will

46:41

be eating food and

46:44

then they're not done with the food, so they just put the

46:46

plate in the fridge. And then later they

46:48

take the plate out and they eat it again.

46:50

Whereas in the U.S., a lot of

46:52

people are mortified by putting food in

46:54

the refrigerator that isn't in a container,

46:57

like an airtight container. And

46:59

it's fascinating that these are cultural

47:01

differences more than really

47:05

public health differences, aren't they?

47:07

Oh, 100%. And it's

47:09

so, it's so interesting. They are

47:11

some of the most deeply thought

47:13

questions in the world. So

47:15

because I've been writing this book, I've

47:17

had a Google alert on the words fridge,

47:20

refrigerator, things like that for

47:22

again, a decade, just to see what people

47:24

are talking about, make sure I don't miss

47:26

any news, et cetera. And

47:28

I will tell you that the primary thing

47:30

to argue about on the internet is whether

47:32

ketchup should be in the fridge. Should peanut

47:35

butter be in the fridge? Right. Yeah. Those

47:37

are big fights aren't they? Why does my

47:39

boyfriend put this in the fridge without a

47:41

lid on it? Like you're

47:43

saying, uncovered food brings out a primitive

47:47

horror. So

47:50

these are the things

47:52

that people are passionate about. And

47:56

I think that that goes to show something

47:58

that's a really... it,

50:00

on kosher. People were

50:02

genuinely afraid that this

50:04

technology was these foods

50:07

that could have been harvested

50:09

six months ago, but looked like they could

50:11

have been harvested yesterday. What were

50:14

these zombie foods? It seems

50:17

ridiculous to us now. Then

50:19

I went to Rwanda to look

50:22

at, they're trying to build a coal chain there,

50:24

and I wanted to understand what that looked like.

50:27

The folks there told me, oh

50:29

yeah, when the traders sell

50:31

the leftover stuff that has

50:33

been rejected for export from the one

50:36

refrigerated warehouse in the city center,

50:39

they have to leave it outside in the sun

50:41

to warm it up before it

50:43

goes on sale to local people, because

50:45

the local people won't buy it if it's been

50:47

refrigerated. They don't think it's good. These

50:52

things are very

50:55

deep feelings

50:57

about what is right and what is wrong. I

51:00

mean, food, the raw and the cooked, this

51:03

is ways in which we define

51:05

right and wrong, good and bad.

51:07

Yeah, it's

51:10

a topic about which there

51:12

are some science

51:14

and a lot of feelings. I'm

51:17

curious how you navigated that as

51:20

an author and somebody who did

51:23

so much reporting and dug very

51:25

deep into the history and into

51:27

the science and who obviously

51:29

is regularly talking about food

51:31

on the podcast. I can

51:33

tell right now that probably

51:36

some of the feeling

51:38

part of it, some of the opinions

51:40

may be slightly different,

51:42

you and me personally, about some

51:44

of these approaches. I might take

51:46

more of a skeptical, although I

51:48

think you're probably pretty skeptical as

51:50

well, but I might take more

51:52

of a hardline skeptical bent about

51:54

certain things and I might be

51:56

more permissive or open about other

51:58

things and vice versa.

52:01

So how do you navigate talking

52:03

about something like this and not

52:05

really showing your cards or saying,

52:07

you know, and my opinion is

52:09

this, even though it's not really

52:11

based on fact, it's just how

52:13

I feel. There's so much room

52:15

for that in a conversation like

52:17

this. I know. And it's really

52:19

hard. And I really, I really,

52:23

you know, I'm not a scientist by training

52:25

and I really didn't want to come across

52:27

as, you know, being

52:30

unscientific. And so actually I was

52:32

really lucky. I got a offer

52:35

piece loan foundation grant for the book. And

52:38

one of the things that funded was having

52:41

science advisors read certain sections

52:43

and give me feedback. And

52:46

one of the sections I had three

52:48

separate public health experts read

52:50

was the section about health, because

52:53

I just felt like, ah,

52:55

I don't want to mess this up. I

52:58

have my own feelings and biases. There

53:01

is a bunch of evidence out there, but

53:03

what am I missing? What am I misinterpreting?

53:05

What am I putting too much weight on

53:07

because it's kind of how I feel. Right.

53:10

Am I cherry picking? What evidence

53:12

is more solid? What evidence is

53:15

a little bit wiggly? It's hard

53:17

to know that. It's really hard.

53:19

And I know there will be

53:21

people who still think I got

53:23

it wrong. So it's

53:27

tough. And yeah, I mean, I also

53:29

feel like, you know, I mean, is building

53:33

a cold chain in sub-Saharan

53:35

Africa wrong? Absolutely not. And

53:38

the folks who are doing that are doing

53:41

it with the absolute best of intentions. Is

53:44

it important to look at what that does in

53:47

terms of the environment, in terms

53:49

of actually right

53:51

now, what that does is that creates a

53:54

way for farmers to export

53:56

their produce to Europe. So

53:58

they're just producing producing kind of

54:01

cheaper vegetables for their

54:03

former colonial overlords, which brings

54:05

in money,

54:07

which is important. Money is necessary.

54:10

But is that the

54:12

way to go with your economy? There are costs there

54:14

too. So all of this, I just... It's

54:18

really complicated. It's so complicated. I see

54:20

a lot when we talk about cars

54:22

and we talk about climate change and

54:24

there's sort of the privilege

54:26

of the West saying, we did it, we fucked everything

54:28

up when we did it, so you probably shouldn't do

54:30

it when we fucked things up. And it's like, wait

54:33

a minute, is maybe

54:35

not a better approach, but is another approach to

54:37

say, okay, we did it and we fucked a

54:39

lot of things up. Are there lessons

54:41

to be learned from how we fucked it up? Can

54:44

we support a

54:47

new vision for

54:49

this incredibly economically

54:52

empowering technology

54:56

that is a little kinder to the

54:58

environment or kinder to the people who

55:01

are utilizing it? Totally. I

55:03

mean, I was invited to speak

55:05

at the first UN meeting of

55:07

this new initiative, Global Cooling for

55:10

All, that had its first meeting,

55:12

I want to say like five or six years ago, and

55:15

it just hit home for

55:17

me. That's the reason

55:20

to write this book. I mean, it took me long

55:22

enough. I had to remind myself several times why I

55:24

was doing it, but that's

55:26

the reason to do it, is to really

55:28

make this accounting that no one

55:30

has made of refrigerations,

55:32

costs and benefits, and

55:34

really try and understand

55:37

all the implications and the ways that

55:39

it has shifted things for

55:42

good and for bad, and for a mixture

55:44

of the two, make

55:47

that interesting, entertaining and readable, sure,

55:49

but also make it so

55:53

that we can think

55:55

about this and decide if we

55:57

want to change it and decide.

56:00

folks in Rwanda can decide what they

56:02

would like to do differently. Right,

56:05

right, because they have access to the

56:07

education and the information and how we

56:11

learn from past failures and how we

56:14

learn from past successes. What

56:17

I love about that approach, I have to

56:19

say here as we start to wind down

56:21

the show, is

56:24

I see these parallels that

56:26

speak to me personally. I've

56:30

been seeing patients all day today and one of

56:32

the themes that has been coming up over and

56:34

over and over in a lot of psychotherapy sessions

56:37

because I work in a hospital and

56:39

I'm very existentially oriented, is

56:41

this concept

56:44

of with the good coming the

56:47

bad or this concept of risk benefit,

56:49

this concept of like nothing is that

56:51

clean, nothing is all this way or

56:53

all that way. And sometimes it being

56:56

one way helps us see the underbelly

56:58

and vice versa. This

57:00

gray area, this complicated

57:03

ambivalence, it is

57:05

the way of the world and

57:09

being willing to venture into it and

57:11

to grapple with it in a meaningful

57:13

way and to not go to this,

57:16

I think intellectually and emotionally dishonest place

57:18

of therefore we shall ban it or

57:20

yes, it shall take over the world.

57:24

But finding that middle ground

57:27

which really allows for

57:29

an honest accounting, it's

57:32

an art that

57:36

I don't think we often elevate,

57:39

especially in American

57:41

society. We

57:43

love to be sure. We

57:47

love for there to be a right answer

57:49

and a wrong answer. And

57:51

this is such a beautiful example of

57:54

it's complicated. You

57:56

know, I think complicated is interesting. true

58:00

as you're saying, it's also

58:02

interesting. It's why

58:04

things are interesting to me. But

58:07

you're right. I think it's a lot easier

58:12

to get yourself on an evening talk show

58:14

and sell a lot of copies if I

58:16

was like, refrigeration is killing

58:18

us and here's why. Right. Yeah.

58:21

This is where the truth is, this

58:25

is where the beauty is and this

58:28

is where the fascination is, honestly. Well,

58:32

gosh, I feel like I've learned so much

58:34

and yet there's so much more within the

58:36

pages of this book. I can't

58:38

thank you enough for sharing not just

58:40

the incredible hard work that went into

58:43

producing this, but also some of your

58:45

insights with us here in this hour.

58:47

Thank you so much for being here.

58:49

Oh, thank you so much. I enjoyed

58:52

this conversation so much. I'm

58:54

glad everybody, the book is frost

58:57

by how refrigeration changed our food,

58:59

our planet, and ourselves by Nicola

59:01

Twilly and everybody listening. Thank

59:03

you for coming back week after week.

59:05

I'm really looking forward to the next

59:07

time we all get together to talk

59:09

to you.