Societal impact of the T-TT program

The collapse of the frozen food industry that precipitated the T-TT program at WRRC occurred when the United States was on the verge of a post-war boom, and the American industrial complex could turn from war-related activities to peacetime consumer goods. The work at WRRC had a large impact on the frozen food industry in terms of setting the standards for food preparation and storage and restoring consumer confidence. But it would not have been as successful except for the concurrent development in related industries.

The refrigeration industry grew enormously, and separate "zero-degree" freezing units became increasingly available for household use. New refrigerant gases (the freons) were found to have ideal properties for both freezers and refrigerators. Prior to the war, railroad cars using an ice-salt mixture could maintain a temperature only down to 15 ° F, but in the post war period new "reefer" cars using mechanical refrigeration could guarantee the zero-degree requirement for frozen food storage. Finally, new moisture-resistant and flexible plastic and metal foils were generated by the packaging industry in response to the need of the increased production of frozen foods. It was the dovetailing of research and development in all of these areas that led to the continued growth of the frozen food industry and the acceptance by the public of this commodity as a contributor to a better quality of life.

In 1950, when the T-TT studies were just underway, the frozen food industry had $500 million in sales. That number grew to $6.245 billion in 1966 and reached $68 billion in 1999. As the twentieth century ended, there were 40 million freezers and 120 million refrigerators in American homes. Over 2 million people were employed by 550 major frozen food producers, and there was a warehouse capacity of 3 billion cubic feet, with more than eight billion pounds of frozen foods in storage. One-quarter of all U.S. food exports are frozen foods, with a value of some $5 billion. The WRRC played a major part in the mobilization of scientific resources dedicated to the reproducible and safe production of high-quality frozen foods for human consumption. The knowledge developed at WRRC during studies of frozen food stability and quality has since been applied to other processing and preservation techniques, to the development of value-added food products, and to food safety improvements by WRRC scientists and their colleagues at other governmental, academic, and industrial research and development facilities.

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Early methods of food preservation | A chance discovery | Frozen food chemistry | U.S. Agriculture turns to science | Frozen food research begins at WRRC | Defining "Quality" | Chemical reactions at low temperatures | Chlorophyll as a benchmark | Major scientific results from the T-TT program | Societal impact of the T-TT program | Landmark designation | Further reading and acknowledgments

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