Cold Chain
The global supply chain that keeps perishable goods at controlled temperatures has revolutionised the food industry, and other industries too.
The global supply chain that keeps perishable goods at controlled temperatures has revolutionised the food industry. It widened our choice of food and improved our nutrition. It enabled the rise of the supermarket. And that, in turn, transformed the labour market: less need for frequent shopping frees up women to work. As low-income countries get wealthier, fridges are among the first things people buy: in China, it took just a decade to get from a quarter of households having fridges to nearly nine in ten.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Fully loaded shelves, Credit: Shutterstock)
Last on
Sources and related links
Dan Koeppel - Banana: The fate of the fruit that changed the world, Hudson Street Press, 2008
Tom Jackson - Chilled: How refrigeration changed the world and might do so again, Bloomsbury, 2015
Stephen Schlesinger - Bitter Fruit: The story of the American Coup in Guatemala
Broadcasts
- Sat 14 Oct 2017 02:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Online, Australasia, News Internet & UK DAB/Freeview
- Sat 14 Oct 2017 19:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Mon 16 Oct 2017 03:50GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online & UK DAB/Freeview only
Podcast
-
![]()
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world
