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By Harriet Goode
Home Agent’s Note: Here is one in a series of releases on consumer education by Don Long of the agricultural economics department of Virginia Polytechnic Institute. For several years, frozen foods have been glamour foods. In this role, it sometimes seemed they could do no wrong In our eyes. Often it seemed we bought them because they were frozen, not because of any great advantages they offered.
Much of the glamour has passed and we now take a closer look at a frozen food before we buy It. We're back to our. usual habit of judging foods on their true merits. Frozen foods do have a place in our eating patterns. The size and importance of the place isn’t fully decided..in fact It never will be fully decided since in food marketing nothing is more constant than change. One thing is evident, though, as we approach a frozen food case. It is extremely difficult to evaluate quality. There are few really good guides to follow in buying. The food is in a container so usually you cannot see the food itself. It may be hard and cold, but this is no guarantee that it has been kept, or even is now, cold enough.
Time and temperature are two of the major enemies of frozen foods. Processing of any form...canning, drying, freezing, etc., does not improve quality. The best you could hope' for is to keep the same quality, and this is impossible over time. As time passes, some quality loss is inevitable. Time is an enemy of frozen foods. Closely allied with time but a separate and perhaps more deadly enemy is temperature. If frozen foods are held at 0 degrees or lower, time quality losses are very slow. At temperatures above 0 degrees, the quality loss speeds up rapidly, even though the food may remain hard and cold. Unfortunately, time and temperature damage is accumulah<*%. S9v«frM-weeks of abfive 0 degrees but still freezing temperatures, may be as damaging as a quick thaw and refreeze. In other words, it is not the highest temperature at which frozen foods have reached that determines the damage, it is the total of the times held at that arid other temperatures. Temperature damage cannot be canceled out or repaired. It can only be avoided. Actually, while we've been talking of time and temperature as the enemies; this is not quite true. Time and temperature do the actual damage, but it is people who let them.
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