The Man Who Revolutionized Modern Food

There’s probably not a person in America who has not enjoyed the benefits of Clarence Birdseye’s ingenuity.  In our modern digital world it’s easy to forget the subtle geniuses who revolutionized the mundane elements of our lives. Clarence Birdseye is one such genius.  He saw the magic in frozen foods and transformed kitchens into springs of endless culinary possibilities.

Born in 1886 in Brooklyn, New York, Birdseye was destined to unravel the cold science that would reshape how we perceive, store, and enjoy food.  Young Birdseye was not the kind to be bound by the chalk and talk of classrooms and as a college student he took a job in the barren Montana countryside capturing small animals for tick research.  Later this spirit of adventure would take him to frigid Labrador, a province in north east Canada. While fishing he noticed that the fish that froze very rapidly at 40 degrees below zero (F) but still tasted fresh when he would eat them much later. The Inuit people, with whom he shared the frozen landscape, had been eating such food for centuries. Birdseye observed that ice crystals form in foods as they freeze, damaging the tissue while doing so, giving the food a mushy or dry consistency and watering down the taste.  He noticed that the faster the food freezes the fewer ice crystals are formed, and the less molecular damage.  Apparently this was the reason that “fast frozen” foods retained their taste better than more slowly frozen foods. 

This realization set the stage for Birdseye’s success and the changing of how the modern world handles and consumes food.  Of course convincing a world that was almost universally, exclusively familiar with fresh food wouldn’t be easy.  But Birdseye was no ordinary visionary. He was a man who saw the promise nestled in frozen crystals, waiting to unveil a world where the luxury of variety and the assurance of preservation coexisted.

The beginning of Birdseye’s frozen food journey began in the early 1920s when he developed a process to flash-freeze foods. This wasn’t just about putting food on ice. It was about encapsulating the freshness of the farm, the ocean, and the orchard in a way that could grace dinner tables anytime, anywhere. In 1922 he founded Birdseye Seafoods Inc., to flash-freeze fish at -40 degrees (F). It went bankrupt due to lack of customer demand. 

Not long after, having developed and patented a new, more efficient method for flash freezing food, he next founded General Seafood Corporation.  This time he struck gold as food companies around the country started to imagine the possibilities.  Over the next few years Birdseye would patent new and more efficient techniques for freezing food.

In 1929 Birdseye would sell his company and patents for $22 million ($350 million in today’s dollars) to what would become General Foods, and they would incorporate his business as Birdseye Frozen Food Company.  In 1930 the company test marketed the selling of a variety of frozen foods, including meats, vegetables and fruits under the brand name Birdseye, and the rest is history.  Birdseye became a household name across the country and today the name is synonymous with frozen foods. 

The impact of Birdseye’s frozen revolution was profound. It broke the shackles of seasonality, allowed for the global sharing of culinary treasures, and heralded a new age of convenience. With his extraordinary vision Birdseye changed how much of the world eats.  Never before had consumers had such a variety of foods at their disposal at any one time.  The seasonality that once drove food consumption was no longer a barrier to eating one’s favorite foods year round.  Shopping habits changed as vegetables, fish and meats, which were less likely to be canned, no longer had to be purchased fresh, but could be thawed and taste almost like they came from the farm or the ocean that very day. 

By the time Birdseye died in 1956, his name had become synonymous with frozen foods and he had changed the way much of the world eats. Whether it’s ice cream or French fries or  a New York strip, the next time you’re looking for your favorite food in the frozen food section of your local grocery store, marvel at the fact that the journey that made all of that possible started with a guy fishing in -40 degree weather in the frozen Canadian tundra.  That’s something worth being grateful for.