It was an ordinary day. Looking in the frozen food counter at our local Giant Supermarket to get a box of fudge bars. Opened the door and the cold air came rushing out and just about knocked me over. The hot summer day made the air seem so much colder. Grabbed the fudge bars and headed to the next cabinet for a few packages of frozen vegetables. While putting them in our freezer at home, I wondered how long ago frozen products were offered at food stores. After a quick Google I found that it was in 1925 that a Brooklyn-born entrepreneur, Clarence Birdseye, invented a machine for freezing packaged fish that would revolutionize the storage and preparation of food. Before long, Maxson Food Systems of Long Island was using Mr. Birdseye's technology, known as the double-belt freezer, to sell the first complete frozen dinners to airlines in 1945. Went over well, but after the death of the company's founder, William L. Maxson, plans to expand frozen food products was put on hold. Then in 1953. a Swanson food salesman named Gerry Thomas, conceived the company's first complete frozen dinners. He noticed that the company had 260 tons of frozen turkey left over after Thanksgiving. It was sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars which had to be moving to keep the refrigeration unit working. Thomas had the idea to add other holiday staples such as cornbread stuffing and sweet potatoes and serve them alongside the turkey in frozen, partitioned aluminum trays designed to be heated in the oven. After some research into how to eliminate any bacteria, it was decided how to heat the meat and vegetables at the same time while killing food-borne germs. The new Swanson dinners were a commercial triumph and in 1954, the first full year of production, Swanson sold ten million trays. Wasn't long before Banquet Foods and Morton Frozen Foods soon brought out their offerings, winning over more and more middle-class households across the country. Mr. Maxson had called his frozen airline meals "Strato-Plates," so Swanson introduced their frozen meals to America as its "TV dinner." This happened at a time when the concept was guaranteed to be lucrative as millions of women entered the workforce in the early 1950s, so Mom was no longer always at home to cook elaborate meals. Now, the question of what to eat for dinner had a prepared answer. Some men wrote angry letters to the Swanson company complaining about the loss of home-cooked meals. But, for many families, it was the perfect fit. Pop them in the oven and 25 minutes later you could have a full supper while enjoying the new national pastime: television. And, everyone in the family could have their own favorite meal. Were you alive when all this happened as I was? Sitting by the black and white TV with a TV dinner of my choice...what a great time I had. Only problem was that only about 9% of the U.S. households had a black and white TV set. Wasn't until five years later that the number increased to 64% of homes having a TV and by 1960 that number had increased to more than 87%. Swanson took full advantage of this trend, with TV advertisements that depicted elegant, modern women serving these novel meals to their families while enjoying their new TV. By 1970 there were more companies selling frozen meals to American households and the New York Times food critic observed that in 1977 that TV dinner consumers had no taste, but for those on diets, the built-in portions were a blessing. Then in 1986 Campbell Soup Company invented microwave-safe trays, which cut meal preparation to mere minutes! But, now convenience food was too convenient for some diners. One food columnist reported that "progress is wonderful, but I'm going to miss those crinkly aluminum TV trays." It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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