by Charles Simmins

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: June 17, 2009

Frozen foods are a staple of American meals. Without a reliable method of freezing meats, vegetables and fruits, our meal choices in the winter would be limited and unappetizing. Clarence Birdseye is the inventor that changed our way of life.

Birdseye was born in 1886. He attended college, but lacked the funds to graduate. Instead, his interest in nature drew him to the U.S. Biological Survey and work in the cold Canadian north.

Birdseye noticed that fresh caught fish froze solid as they lay on the ice in the bitter Arctic wind. When thawed weeks later, they were safe to eat and had retained nearly all the characteristics of a fresh caught fish. Flash freezing, the very rapid freezing of food, became an idea he would experiment with and test for many years. His goal was a quality frozen food.

When food freezes normally, the water in the cells turns into ice and expands. Ice has more volume than liquid water. That expansion bursts the cells apart and results in the destruction of the now thawed food. The taste will change. The appearance will be unpleasant. Frozen food, done the conventional way, was not a success in Birdseye's time.

Birdseye's dream was to discover a method of flash freezing food in an economical manner. Once he was on the right track, he realized that he also needed a way to ship the frozen food, and to display it in a frozen state in stores. The "Quick Freeze Machine" was his answer to the "how to" problem.

He then proceeded to invent display cases that could keep his product at the correct temperature. They were manufactured and leased to grocery stores who would stock Birdseye's frozen food.

Shipping the food and keeping it frozen required more inventing on Birdseye's part. By 1944, the railroads had refrigerated boxcars and frozen foods could be shipped thousands of miles in safety.

Birdseye was not just an inventor. His business acumen allowed him to found, build, and sell several successful companies. Birdseye, Inc. is named after him and carries on his legacy of quality frozen foods.

Food preservation before Clarence Birdseye meant smoking, salting and other methods that left the food less fresh, less nutritional and less appetizing. Food quality and food safety of preserved foods did not match that of fresh.

Birdseye's genius used his observations in a completely different field to find a new way to preserve food, flash freezing. The food remained as fresh as possible, full of its nutrients, and safe to eat months after harvesting. That makes Clarence Birdseye a famous inventor who changed our way of life.

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