My mother in law, a traditional Chinese brought on a small village farm in Malaysia, to this day only begrudgingly accepts refrigeration, as a necessary evil that makes food less healthy.
Refrigeration (and later economical freezers) are the only reason stomach cancer is not the leading cause of cancer in humans. Pre-refrigeration, mostly everything was preserved by fermentation, and lots of people got stomach cancer [1], [2] (BTW, fermented foods are another area people are currently anti-science with respect to food) as a result. Food that is flash-frozen immediately after harvest (whatever that means for the food in question) is the most nutritious. If it is GMO food (likely to be either less expensive or more nutritious than the non-GMO equivalent, else why modify it?) cooked in a way that preserves the superior nutrition, even better! [1]: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/181.full and [2]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22499775
A lot of food these days is bred to be more attractive (because it sells better), often at the expense of flavor and with no regard to nutrition and little to cost. If you look around, there are plenty of articles out there on how this has changed foods like apples and tomatoes.
I'm curious - what is the thinking behind "...makes food less healthy"?
Is the thought that fridges give off some kind of chemical that affects the food? Is it the act of making the food cold itself that makes it less healthy? Is she opposed to electric refrigeration, or would something like an old school icebox[0] be objectionable too?
The coding term would be "FUD". I'm sure you've noticed the trend for older people in all cultures to believe every email that gets forwarded to them, and forward it on. In Chinese culture, a large chunk of that is FUD related to health stuff. Remember Chinese medicine goes back millennia, so there's a lot of confusion about what to believe among that generation too, so they feel like they better follow everything just to be safe.
To this issue specifically, I think it's more of a shelf-life concern, that you can't artificially lengthen the shelf life of a food without corrupting it somehow. In that regard, I can't say she doesn't have a point. That the movie "Better Life Through Chemistry" is a satire is somewhat telling.
The word healthy means almost nothing. Its an arbitrary term that we use to create a general idea of what we 'should" be eating and what we "shouldn't" be eating.
It's why the debate about whether or not milk/eggs/bread are healthy rages on and on. There is no definition of the word healthy so anyone can make their own interpretations of what makes those foods healthy or unhealthy.
The word "healthy" is often a too-vague description of the benefits. It's become a catch-all phrase to describe numerous attributes. Some foods, like bread, are simultaneously healthy and unhealthy.
While it's laughable to us, I don't think its that far off from what people believe about other things.
COLLEGE EDUCATED people believe that vaccines cause autism.
GMOs are considered less healthy than normally grown foods
Organic foods are considered "healthier" than normally grown foods even though studies have shown that there isn't a statistically significant difference in nutrients that matter.
People believe microwaving foods causes cancer in humans and also makes food less nutritious in a significant manner.
These are people who have every single resource in the world to educate themselves on the science of things, and yet believe dumb shit.
Compared to that, some farmers in a small village not completely trusting something that they don't understand or really have any ability to properly understand seems much less crazy.
To flip this on its head, just because something is new doesn't mean we have to use it all the time.
Americans refrigerate more than we need to. Butter, eggs, certain vegetables (like tomatoes). Tomatoes have healthy compounds in them that break down under refrigeration. I'm sure you've noticed certain things taste different after they've been refrigerated?
In this particular arena, we often don't know what we don't know. Instinct can lead us astray, but it can also be nagging at us for a very good reason.
> Tomatoes have healthy compounds in them that break down under refrigeration.
Such as? It's true that refrigeration can impact the taste/texture of tomatoes. That doesn't mean it necessarily makes them less healthy. Also, if you're buying store-bought tomatoes, they're shipped in refrigerated trucks anyway.
Depending on how long you have tomatoes on hand, you might be better off refrigerating them even for taste and texture.
I read (on here) about eggs not too long ago. In Europe (UK?) where eggs are not refrigerated, farmers are required to give their chickens antibiotics to reduce salmonella in the eggs. That's why it's safe to keep them on the counter. In the US there's less antibiotics use in the chickens; instead the eggs are washed and kept cold.
I was surprised that the antibiotics are mandated in Europe, given the problems we're seeing with antibiotic-resistance in bacteria that's largely due to overuse in farming. I would've expected that the US farmers were using antibiotics and Europeans were not, rather than the other way around.
Antibiotics seem to be a part of it, but not the most important factor. The egg naturally has a thin film around it which protects it from contamination by microbes. In the US, the eggs are washed, which removes this film, rendering the egg susceptible to contamination. The eggs then have to be refrigerated to slow bacterial growth. In the rest of the world, the eggs are left unwashed, so the film prevents the egg from being contaminated and no refrigeration is required.
In the UK, farmers are not required to give antibiotics to reduce salmonella. However, most buyers require "Lion Mark" certified eggs, which requires vaccination (not antibiotics!) against salmonella. Because of this program British eggs are widely considered the safest in the world. I will happily eat Lion Mark eggs raw.
I'm surprised that free market enthusiasts rarely talk about the Lion Mark, because it's great example of entirely private business (except for the government trademark enforcement) improving standards for consumers.
Where are you getting your information? As far as I know, the EU has banned most antibiotics for livestock since 2006. I don't know about the UK.
A little bit of n=1: I eat eggs directly from the local Mennonite community. They don't use antibiotics in their chickens. I keep the eggs in a bucket in the pantry (cool, but not refrigerated). I wash my eggs before using them. I haven't had an issue with Salmonella yet. I imagine there's a very big difference between free range, naturally raised chickens and eggs and factory farmed chicken and eggs, but I'm not up to date on the details.
In the UK chickens are vaccinated against salmonella. My understanding is that this is not legally mandated but a compromise by the egg industry to avoid regulation after some major salmonella outbreak a few decades ago.
Mandating antibiotic use would be a great way to breed resistant salmonella.
Tomatoes that are eaten as they have just been taken out of the refrigerator certainly taste different, at least for me. Just had a recent contradictory discussion with my gf about this, as I choose to always keep the vegetables out of the refrigerator. The same goes for fruits. Butter is different, if you keep it for more than an hour at room temperature (20-21 Celsius) it will most certainly start to melt, I personally do not like that.
The melting point of butter is 90-95°F (32-35°C)[0]. My family always kept it out on the counter, even in the summer. It never gets that hot inside thanks to the insulation required to keep the house warm in the winter.
I agree with you about the Tomatoes though. That one is backed by science, but what else is impacted by refrigeration that hasn't been discovered by science yet? There's no danger in leaving produce on the counter so long as you eat it within 2-3 days. It varies, of course. I keep bananas on the counter for a full week.
> Butter is different, if you keep it for more than an hour at room temperature (20-21 Celsius) it will most certainly start to melt
It will not. It remains on my kitchen counter in a ceramic or glass container and keeps its shape. Lots of people do this, look up "butter bell" or "butter keeper" For example: http://goo.gl/fLIotj
"Butter is different, if you keep it for more than an hour at room temperature (20-21 Celsius) it will most certainly start to melt, I personally do not like that."
But is she worried that her neighbor's refrigerator is going to poison her food? If somebody has a self-driving car and it runs me over, that's obviously a personal concern for me. How somebody keeps their food (unless I'm eating it) is not my concern.
