The refrigerator as a problem and solution: Food storage practices as part of sustainable food culture

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore how household food storage practices over time relate to environmental conditions and issues and how this has affected the practices and food culture. Through a bricolage of personal accounts, advertisements, magazine articles and kitchen guidelines, I use Sweden as the empirical example. Departing from the introduction of domestic refrigeration until today, I give particular attention to how different societal actors have framed refrigerated food storage as both solution and problem in relation to issues today linked to environmental sustainability, for example local climate conditions, energy consumption, depletion of the ozone layer and food waste. The paper also shows how people refigure the materiality of past storage to fit into modern-day life. The results, I argue, illustrate how food storage, as a culinary infrastructure, influence daily food practices and thereby understandings of sustainable food. The refrigerator and freezer have had a big impact on food culture. Hence, to encourage more sustainable food practices societal actors need to address and problematize culinary infrastructures and the ideas and values these convey regarding food and sustainability. The paper contributes with a cultural historical approach to how food related practices and infrastructures over time interlinks with different ideas of sustainability.