How the fridge changed food | Nicola Twilley
Food researcher Nicola Twilley explains how the global cold chain underpins modern diets by keeping food fresh and enabling long-distance transport of meat and produce, while forming an enormous artificial cryosphere. Using examples such as Kenyan avocado exports and the absence of marula fruit in U.S. supermarkets, she shows how refrigeration creates both benefits and inequities, shifts where food waste occurs, and significantly contributes to global emissions. Twilley argues that as many countries are only now building their cold chains, this is a critical moment to rethink freshness, develop lower-emission refrigeration, and explore non-cold preservation methods and system-wide redesigns of how we store and move food.