Interactive timeline: The history of frozen foods

Published 7:30 am Friday, March 25, 2016

In the 21st century, frozen foods have become the norm. Today, grocery aisles are filled with a variety of frozen goodies ready for long-term preservation.

Humans froze foods as a way to preserve as early as 1000 B.C., when the Chinese used ice cellars, and the Romans used compressed snow in underground cellars to keep foods fresh for an extended period of time.

However, the modern frozen food industry was pioneered by Clarence Birdseye, the inventor of the double belt freezer, a machine that could quickly freeze fish. After being issued a U.S. patent in 1927, his company General Seafood Corporation started freezing different meats, vegetables and fruits. In 1930, the first line of frozen foods went on the market thus starting the frozen food industry.