The Strange History of Frozen Food .

GFreezerburns, he tried Bob's Pickle Pops, which apparently is pretty trendy in Texas.

regory Ng is the chief marketing officer for a marketing agency from North Carolina and the self-proclaimed "Frozen Food Master." He doesn't like pickles — especially the frozen kind — and as the dedicated host to the Youtube frozen food review series

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"People tell me they use it as an energy boost before exercising or as a refreshing snack," he says. "To me that's really disgusting."

But the pickle popsicle is only one of thousands of frozen food items Greg has sampled. He walks the frozen food aisle twice a week at every major supermarket chain. He gets two or three shipments of new frozen meal or snack options per week on dry ice.

"Part of the reason why I coined the term "Frozen Food Master" is really just the idea that I can say with great certainty that I have tasted more [frozen food] variety than anyone on this planet," he says.

There are thousands of new items introduced into the market every month, he says. Some gourmet, some gluten-free, others family size. These days, there are entire grocery store aisles dedicated to frozen pizzas alone. In 2010 — during a recession — frozen-food sales grew 3.1%, according to the wall street . Since then, frozen food technology has increased its popularity by including healthier options and more eco-friendly packaging, which allow foods to stay fresher longer and retain more nutrients.

Clarence Birdseye [Photos: Birdseye]

Clarence Birdseye: Father of Frozen Food

The frozen food industry would be nothing without Clarence Birdseye, the man responsible for Birds Eye frozen foods, which is currently owned by Pinnacle Foods Inc. People have been freezing foods as a means of preservation since as early as 1000 B.C., when the Chinese stored goods in ice cellars. But Birdseye figured out the logistics of selling frozen foods: how could he freeze it fast so it didn't deform the food tissue? How would he package it? How would he transport the product?

As a young engineer in Labrador, an eastern province in Canada, Birdseye often froze his catch after a day of fishing to keep it fresh. He learned this from the Inuit who would fish from holes in the ice and let it freeze instantly in the frigid temperatures, Mark Kurlansky writes in Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man. Birdseye noticed that when the fish thawed, it wasn't mushy like other frozen foods he had tried before. This was around 1912.

"When he lived in Labrador, the food he froze for his family was really good — not like the frozen food that was available everywhere," Kurlasky writes. "He realized that because it froze instantly, because it was so cold — that was the key to making frozen food good."

It wasn't until 1927 that Birdseye applied to patent a multiplate freezing machine. According to the Handbook of Frozen Foods, Birdseye placed food between two metallic plates at -13 degrees F against a low convection tunnel to flash-freeze the product. In 1928, Birdseye was successful in creating the double belt freezer which would be the forerunner to modern freezing technology. In 1930, the first line of frozen foods went public through the Birds Eye Frosted Food Company which was later sold to Postum, Inc.                                                                         The original, flash-frozen foods included haddock fillets, 17 other cuts of meat and fish, as well as fruits and veggies like spinach, loganberries and raspberries. The company advertised June peas "as gloriously green as any you will see next summer."

By World War II, canned goods were sent to soldiers overseas and Americans were encouraged to purchase frozen foods. Frozen also used fewer ration points than canned, according to the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association's (NFRA) website. Post-war, between 1945 and 1946, Americans bought 800 million pounds of frozen food, Kurlansky writes.

With the invention of the fish stick and the 98-cent TV dinner in 1954, frozen meals became an American staple. TV trays are still among foods Greg reviews on his show, but they make up less than one percent of the total frozen variety.

"People just don't eat that way anymore," he says. "You can make a really good full meal using frozen products out of components in a way that saves time without sacrificing health."                                                                                         

Gerry Thomas: Father of the TV Dinner

Back in 1954, when the Swanson TV dinner was first sold in retail outlets, a complete, frozen meal was the first of its kind. And it was controversial: men wrote to the company complaining that they preferred their wives cook from scratch like their mothers did as opposed to the "just heat and serve" Swanson meal. (A sign of the times, surely). In 25 minutes, this commercial from 1955 says, your wife could make a meal with "hearty slices of moist tender Swanson turkey, with whipped sweet potatoes and golden Swanson butter." The original TV dinner also included "garden fresh" peas and a cornbread dressing.

But as these invention stories go, at least three different sources have been attributed to the TV dinner, according to the Library of Congress: Gerry Thomas, the Swanson Brothers, and Maxson Food Systems, Inc.                                         In 1944, W.L. Maxson Co. created the first frozen dinner called "Strato-Plates," which it sold to the Navy and airlines. The meals consisted of three basic dishes — meat, vegetables and a potato — on a paperboard tray treated with Bakelite resin.                                                                                                                         Knowing that airplanes had weight limits, founder William Maxson invented a convection oven called the "Maxson Whirlwind Oven" that weighed 35 pounds (made of aluminum and steel) and could cook six frozen meals at once in half the time of a conventional oven. At the time of the Popular Mechanics article, Maxson was making plans to produce "single food items for the busy housewife" like french fries, corn, carrots, Swiss steak and turkey. But due to decline in demand at the end of WWII and the death of Mr. Maxson in 1947, Strato-Plates never made it to the retail market.

Three years later, Jack Fisher released FrigiDinner, the first aluminum tray for frozen meals. It was the design the Swanson TV dinner tray — which was shaped like a television — would borrow from a decade later. When Albert and Meyer Bernstein created Frozen Dinners, Inc. in 1949, the FrigiDinner found a market. By 1954, the same year Swanson trademarked the TV dinner concept, the brothers sold over two and a half-million frozen dinners.