Sunday, July 21, 2013

Light Is A New Innovation In Refrigerators

By John Brown


When you little, you may have remembered about trying to 'catch' the light when opening the fridge door to see if it always remained on or only turned on during certain times. Not long after, you would learn that the fridge would stay dark when the doors were closed. New research in food preservation may be able to shed some light into how we can improve on our current fridges.

This might never have occurred to you, but the fruits and vegetables that you buy from the shops are actually still alive. In just the same way that when you cut flowers, the produce can remain alive under relatively good conditions. Without a doubt, there is a vegetable and fruit drawer in your small chest freezer but with the current research, there may be a better means of storing our fruits and vegetables, namely by leaving it in the light.

It actually makes sense that light helps produce live longer when you think about it. Light is necessary for plants to live because their very biology is made to respond to light. In their natural habitats they will experience the light of day and the darkness of night. As with many living creatures, darkness is a time of rest, while light is a time of activity. Daylight is the time that plants feed themselves and grow, thanks to photosynthesis, which only happens during times of light.

By knowing this, we can make some inferences about the effect of light on fruits and vegetables in the fridge. As we all know, it is dark inside the fridge when the door is closed and your groceries are only exposed to light when the door is opened for a brief amount of time. The darkness will make the foodstuffs think it is continually in a state of rest. However, by adding in periods of light within the refrigerator, it will make the produce think it is in the daylight and thus causing them to be active and grow, and in turn, allowing the food to remain fresh and healthy for longer.

This scientific research is relatively recent, but it is definitely something worth looking into. It is certainly possible that future refrigerators will have built in cycles of light and dark to match the circadian rhythms of fruits and vegetables, allowing up to twelve hours of light every day. Similar to every person on Earth, they will wake up during the cycle of light and go to sleep during the cycle of darkness, enabling them to retain their nutritious benefits for longer.




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