Test Your Frozen Food IQ!

By Joe Wilkes

March is National Frozen Food Month and March 6 is National Frozen Food Day. We hope you haven't waited until the last minute to send cards!

1. What were the first frozen vegetables sold? Spinach and peas. American inventor (and taxidermist—that guy loved to preserve!) Clarence Birdseye noticed while ice fishing in Canada that the fish he caught froze quickly on the thick ice, and when thawed later, the fish still tasted good. He applied this notion of "flash-freezing" to fruits and vegetables and found that, like the fish, the veggies retained little cellular damage when frozen quickly. He introduced frozen peas and spinach for sale in 1930. The rest is history. Birds Eye is still a popular frozen food brand today.
   
2. What country consumes the most frozen food per capita? Norway, which consumes 78 pounds of frozen food per capita every year. That's 6 pounds more than its closest competitor, Denmark. The U.S. is barely in the top 10 with 36 pounds.
   
3. How long will a freezer full of food stay frozen if the power goes out? If a freezer is chock-full and unopened, the food will stay frozen for 2 to 4 days. So if the power goes out, you should plan on drinking your cocktail hour beverages neat, lest you open the freezer for ice and ruin all of your stored food. If the freezer is half full, you have about 24 hours before food begins to thaw. So, no peeking!
   
4. Is frozen food less nutritious than fresh food? No. In fact, it may be much healthier because most fruits and vegetables are frozen within 6 hours of harvest, whereas the fresh food in your produce section may be on the road for days. However, it's good to remember that freezing doesn't prevent decay, it merely slows it. The longer the food stays in your freezer, the less nutritional value it will have. It's a good idea to check the expiration dates on prepackaged foods and write the date of freezing on packages of food you freeze yourself. Depending on the type of food, you should probably consider pitching it if it's been around for longer than 6 months.
   
5. How many frozen dinners are purchased in the U.S. each year? Two billion frozen dinners are bought by Americans every year. No one can say if they're actually eaten or just taking up space in the communal Beachbody® freezer by thoughtless coworkers (eat that Lean Cuisine Chicken Parmesan already—it's been months!), but it's a far cry from 1955, the year Swanson introduced the TV dinner and sold a mere 70 million dinners, which was considered a huge marketing success at the time.