Briefs: How cold is your fridge?

Steve James and Chris James at The Food Refrigeration and Process Engineering Research Centre at the University of Bristol, UK, have published a comprehensive study on consumer handling of chilled and frozen products. Consumer habits in 17 countries worldwide were analysed and were found to be comparable in terms of shopping habits and duration of storage of chilled products. Temperatures in refrigerators and how consumers set the temperature were also studied. UK recommendations specify that refrigerator temperatures should not exceed 5°C. The study indicated that the mean temperature was 6°C, with 70% of refrigerators operating at average temperatures above 5°C. Less than 2% of refrigerators operated below 5°C and 33% ran at temperatures above 5°C throughout the monitoring period. Find out more: steve.james@bristol.ac.uk,www.frperc.bris.ac.uk