From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and you're listening to good food.

Just a few years ago, Heat Dome was not a phrase in my vocabulary,

but here we are in June of 2024 and more than half the nation is

sweltering. No doubt the solution for many will be to reach into the fridge for

a cold drink which is is ironic, considering refrigeration is one of the leading

contributors to climate change, but that is a story for another day.

Refrigeration is a quintessential modern luxury and when we

largely take for granted but in her new book Frostbite Nicola Twilly plunges

us into the cold chain and shows us how keeping things frosty has changed the way we eat.

Hi Nicky!

Hi Evan, thanks for having me on the show.

Oh, we love to have you.

I'm so happy that you're back.

So start off by telling us

how much of what we Americans consume is touched by refrigeration.

If you take all of the foods that are consumed by Americans,

so this is data you can get from the USDA and then you calculate which of those things pass through what I call the cold chain basically refrigeration, refrigerated warehouses, refrigerated trucks, something

that's kept cold on its way to us, you end up with something that's nearly three quarters of everything we eat.

And that's probably an underestimate because the USDA data is for things like commodities.

So I take out things like wheat, but by the time that wheat is made into a frozen pizza base, it is being refrigerated.

I understand that we boast an estimated 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space.

Yes, the United States is the world leader still

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