Frostbite
How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves. A deeply researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, Frostbite makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge—and how our future might depend on it.
In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what “fresh” means. More important, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we?
Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment.
Read excerpts from Frostbite:
“How the Fridge Changed Flavor,” Nicola Twilley, The New Yorker (June 8, 2024)
“3 Degrees and $100M of Product: What It’s Like to Work a Shift in a Cold Storage Facility,” Nicola Twilley, Eater (June 26, 2024)
“How to Get Rich From Peeping Inside People’s Fridges,” Nicola Twilley, Wired (July 1, 2024)
EARLY PRAISE
“Nicola Twilley takes readers on a trip along the “cold chain,” which is really what connects farm to table. It’s a fascinating, eye-opening journey, and Twilley is a fabulous guide. Frostbite will forever change the way you look at food.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction.
“In Frostbite, Nicola Twilley has made the simple idea of cold into both a complex tale of life on Earth and a wonderfully addictive reading experience. There’s a remarkable cast of characters–from scientists to freezer specialists–working to understand it, to harness it, along the way accidentally and purposefully reshaping our lives. We so often focus on issues of warmth that we tend to forget the bone-chilling power of its opposite. But, I can promise you, after this book you won’t do that.” —Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Poison Squad.
“Frostbite is astonishing. From daring cryonauts to exhaling salad bags to gaseous apples, Nicola Twilley brings readers on a jaw-dropping voyage that lays bare the miracle, mess, and surprising ramifications of refrigeration. A must-read for anyone who eats or drinks in the 21st century. I can’t stop thinking about this book.” —Bianca Bosker, New York Times bestselling author of Get the Picture.
“In her wonderfully, shiver-inducingly immersive Frostbite, Nicola Twilley scrapes clear a window onto the modern cold chain, the pervasive yet mostly invisible infrastructure of chilled warehouses and distribution systems that supply food to our household refrigerators—today’s humming hearths. As Twilley documents in both entertaining and sobering detail, this cold control is a truly remarkable achievement, a boon for human nourishment and pleasure, yet a costly one for the natural superstructures that ultimately feed and house us all.” —Harold McGee, James Beard Award–winning author of Nose Dive and On Food and Cooking.
REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, AND COVERAGE
This “engrossing book combines lucid history, science and a thoughtful consideration of how daily life today is both dependent on and deformed by this matrix of artificial cold. … I found [it] hard to put down. … Read this book at your own risk; grocery shopping will not be the same.” Sallie Tisdale, New York Times Book Review
“I know, I know: A history of refrigeration may not sound particularly thrilling, but I promise you, Nicola Twilley’s Frostbite is a page-turner. … I’m finding it hard to put down.” Tina Jordan, Deputy Editor, The New York Times Book Review
“I absolutely love @nicolatwilley’s fascinating history of the cold chain, something we never think about but should.” Michael Pollan
A “captivating new book … that should go on your summer reading list. Twilley is an irresistibly entertaining journalist—curious, smart, and funny. Even if you are not a science nerd, her history of refrigeration in our country—which takes us to subterranean cheese caves in Missouri and banana-ripening rooms in NYC—and leaves us with grave questions about how it impacts the environment and politics, is just brilliant.” The Sunday Long Read
“Twilley’s Frostbite is one of the best-informed and most entertaining examples of food or science journalism published since the emergence of the field. … In her research for this book, she consulted the right sources, talked to the right people, and visited the best archives available, but it is Twilley’s first-person experiences that make reading Frostbite so much fun.” Jonathan Rees, Science (Vol. 384, No. 6703) (PDF)
“Twilley … presents Gastropod, a consistently brilliant podcast about food, its science and history. She is also the co-author (with Geoff Manaugh) of 2021’s Until Proven Safe, an acclaimed history of quarantine. With her latest, Frostbite, she has set her own bar higher. … The style is accessible, informative and infectiously readable. Yet all the time, the book is quietly inspiring a desire for change.” Tim Hayward, Financial Times (PDF)
“Nicola Twilley is like the Ernest Shackleton of the planet’s artificial cryosphere. […] Twilley’s book is full of remarkable reasons to find astonishment in what the refrigerator has wrought.” Aaron Rutkoff, Bloomberg
“I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is a page-turner. It is fascinating. And it changes the way you think about every single thing you eat. Go get it now!” Atlas Obscura podcast
“Reading it is like whipping open the fridge doors and finding a feast. For sure, this book will make a cook or foodie very, very happy. It’ll speak to history and pop culture buffs and scientists, too. If you’re up for a fun read this summer, look for Frostbite.” Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm
“This deeply reported, vividly rendered book lives up to its subtitle… [Frostbite] is stuffed with insights both macro and micro.” Angela Chen, Undark
“This is such a fascinating book … [Frostbite] reframes this entire idea of what is fresh.” Alexis Madrigal, KQED’s Forum
“Refrigeration is a quintessential modern luxury and one we largely take for granted, but, in her new book Frostbite, Nicola Twilley plunges us into the cold chain, and shows us how keeping things frosty has changed the way we eat.” Evan Kleinman, KCRW’s Good Food
“From hard science to fascinating history, major machinery to quirky theories, Frostbite … a decidedly interesting and insightful book by an impressively intrepid reporter, offers compelling food for thought about the role of cold in our lives, for better or worse, now and in the future.” Linda M. Castellitto, BookPage (starred review)
“Your book has taken me longer to read than most because on almost every page—I’m not exaggerating when I say this—on almost every page you have something to make me stop and go, wow, I never thought of that! … Frostbite is one of the best books you’ll read this year.” Jimmy Malone, The Jimmy Malone Show
“It’s a fascinating look at how refrigeration shapes different facets of society, including our economy.” Alex Goldmark, Planet Money
“In Frostbite, author Nicola Twilley … explains how refrigeration fundamentally shifted the way we live our lives, from the first discoveries that cold had the ability to preserve food, through the early ice industry, to the intricate cold storage system we live with today, one that touches the majority of what we eat. All of it is fascinating.” Monica Burton, Eater
“Frostbite … is absolutely vital for any conversation today about food, energy, health, and urban development.” Geoff Manaugh, Endnotes
“Nicola Twilley has written an entertaining, important, and incredibly well-researched book that explains it all… This is the book I’ve been waiting for.” Lloyd Alter, Carbon Upfront!
“Twilley has a wry and delightfully muscular style, and she’s an indefatigable researcher.” Elizabeth Royte, Food & Environment Reporting Network
“It’s everything I’ve been waiting for. I am very excited.” Spencer Wright, Scope of Work
“Isn’t a book about keeping it cool the perfect summer book?” Deborah Blum selects Frostbite as one of Science Friday’s Best Science Beach Reads for 2024.
“Frostbite … plunges readers into the chilly depths of the cold chain—the refrigerated infrastructure that envelops our food as it moves from farm to table—and the far-reaching consequences of developing a food system utterly dependent on cold preservation, storage, and delivery.” Naoki Nitta, Civil Eats
“Frostbite, a new book by Nicola Twilley on how refrigeration transformed not only modern-day food and sensibilities, but what was possible to eat and conceive of.” Literary Hub
“A lively history of humans and food and fridges.” Carolyn Kellogg, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“An oddly fascinating look at the world of refrigeration … Twilley’s book is a delightful mine of meaningful trivia … Throughout, the author’s historical reach traverses seemingly effortlessly from the Roman Empire to 19th-century America.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“A literate treat for tech- and history-inclined foodies.”—Kirkus, “20 Books That Should Be Bestsellers”
“A revelatory deep dive into refrigeration’s past and present” … “the result is a brilliant synthesis of a complex system’s many facets.”—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
“This distinctive history tells us not to take our household fridge for granted; it has profoundly affected the composition of our meals and made handy leftovers possible.” —Booklist
“This riveting account of how we manufactured cold is popular history at its best.” Jim Kelly, AirMail
“I was skeptical that a 300-page book on refrigeration could hold my interest, but honestly, with Nicola Twilley’s narrative, fascinating writing, I could have read 300 more pages.” Lindsey Powers choses Frostbite as one of Amazon’s best nonfiction books of July 2024
“Frostbite is an engaging exploration of refrigeration, describing how artificial refrigeration spurred a new era in human nutrition.” FoodTank recommends Frostbite as one of “Twenty Food Systems Reads That Will Inspire You This Summer”
“American food does not become American food without refrigeration… As I was reading your fabulous book, I was stunned, amazed, and jealous — how did you pull this off?” Greta Hardin, The History of American Food
“An actual fridge expert gives us a chill history of the one appliance we can’t live without.” Noel King, Today, Explained
“There’s a few different places where your book kind of broke my brain a little bit.” John Dankosky, Science Friday
“Frostbite … is as lucid, entertaining and fact-rich as her podcast.” Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post
“Every day you open and close your fridge a million times without giving it much thought. Here to help you understand how your refrigerator has changed your life is Nicola Twilley…” Mike Carruthers, Something You Should Know
This book was supported in part by a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology, as well as the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT.