Refrigerators and Freezers are Conveniences; Use With Care to Preserve Health

Home refrigerators and freezers are great conveniences: Everyone will want to enjoy its use. However, as these appliances have become almost standard use items in affluent societies, we need to look at their possible downside also, since this has substantially changed our eating habits and life style. We need to ponder over usage of these appliances to ensure that while we enjoy such conveniences we do not hurt or harm our health by its use. Let us look at some of these risks one by one.

Risk of accidents: Risks of accidents are rare but they do happen. The examples of such risks are, accidental tipping the fridge by young children and crushing them when they try and hang on to its handle. Accidental trapping of very small children in the abandoned fridge is also known to happen while playing. Occasional risk of fire due to electrical accident is also known. These are all avoidable by taking appropriate precautions.

Environmental risks: These appliances use chemicals like hydro-chlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) or hydro-fluorocarbons (HFC) as coolant. These cause environmental hazard by depletion of ozone layer. These chemicals may also seep into drinking water if not dumped properly.

Short term health hazards: Only until about a hundred years ago or even less, our ancestors were used to cook the food fresh everyday and consume it promptly the same day.  Keeping cooked food for more than a day or two was considered unhealthy. Leftover food at room temperature will grow food borne bacteria and fungus, will go rancid and will become health hazard. Bacterial growth may also collect toxins and cause the consumer to have intestinal and systemic problems. Listeria bacteria are known to remain alive in food at fridge temperature of 40 degree F (4 degree C), causing indigestion and intestinal problems, particularly in pregnant women, sick patients, children and old people with weaker immune system.

Long term health hazards due to loss of nutrition: Until a few decades ago the seasonal vegetables were locally grown and were available to people. With communication revolution and distances becoming smaller, these days the vegetables and pre-cooked foods come from afar. Sometimes such foods travel a few thousand miles by ship or by air, deep frozen for days or months and sent to other countries. It is a great blessing that whole world can enjoy fruits and vegetables any time during the year and not necessarily only during its season. But such deep frozen foods lose their nutrition value due to loss of micronutrients and vitamins being destroyed, caused by elapse of time and use of preservatives. Every so often we hear about recommendation of supplements of vitamins and minerals, which mostly is result of such long time between the production and use.

Change of Life style: The refrigerators and freezers have changed the way we live. Freezers have added to the convenience of doing grocery in bulk every few days and keeping it frozen at home. Our ancestors used to eat only fresh because there were no fridges then and hence no leftover foods. I remember my father’s generation would eat their food immediately after it was cooked. In fact the home maker women will wait to cook Chapatti until the bread earner men will come home from work and feed them with freshly cooked meals. Even one day's stale food was usually not used. Now we eat food from fridge cooked even a week old and consume gradually over a few days. This has distinct risk of bacterial growth and loss of nutritive substances.

Precooked ready to eat food: In Western world, where the home maker is also working and there is not enough home help to cook fresh every day, stale food is warmed and offered as a routine. Readymade food from super markets are cooked at times in some different country, deep frozen, marked as "fresh before" such and such date and we buy them all the time. We put in it our fridge at home and consume it within the given time on the label. Such foods must be stored at zero degree F (-18 C) or lower.

Here are some simple recommendations:

·        Eat fresh and raw food ONLY, if possible.

·        Clean fridge every so often.

·        Keep thermometers in fridge and freezers to monitor temperatures.

·        Eat the food left in fridge as soon as possible and discard if in doubt.

·        Keep the food in fridge covered and keep space between foods.

·        Heat food to boil when using food from fridge to ensure bacteria are killed.  

Remember what Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) said; “Let Food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.