Surely the carbon footprint for a fish finger is high. Fish is caught on a powered boat, frozen by power guzzling freezers; driven to a factory, mechanically processed, kept in storage at -30, distributed in energy demanding chilled trucks etc

Thank you for your question, which of course is very topical.

When making carbon footprint comparisons it is important that we compare like for like. For example a 'fresh' exotic fish flown in from the Indian Ocean has an extremely high carbon footprint, however if you live by the coast you may be able to collect fresh of the quayside fish. Frozen fish enables people who live far from the coast to eat fish with little wastage because it has a longer shelf life. If it were not for the frozen option, there might be a high wastage rate of fresh fish transported in land. So, whilst we are not The Carbon Trust (who incidentally might enjoy answering this question too!) we hope that this goes somewhere near to answering your question.

Work recently completed by Defra shows the transportation of goods in a chilled state have a higher carbon footprint than the transportation of goods in a frozen state. The main reason for this is that fresh/chilled has to be kept within a tight temperature range, normally 0°C to +5°C which is energy intensive, whilst frozen products once -18°C is achieved simply need to be maintained at that temperature, very much helped by the thermal mass that has been frozen. Scientists have recently released a paper that suggests eating frozen foods may be better for the environment than eating fresh foods. Click here for more info on frozen food and the environment

Frozen meals from the shops store for such a long time in your freezer that they reduce the amount of shp visits you make and this reduces your petrol consumption. As for the power required to store your frozen meals – it can cost as little as £18 per year to run your freezer! The frozen foods, frozen meals and frozen ready meals that you are looking from the supermarkets have all been flash frozen and so they retain their goodness for longer. They retain the nutrients, texture and colours. The ingredients in frozen meals and frozen ready meals can be extremely fresh because they are frozen immediately after harvest and this is when they are at their nutritional peak. When foods are frozen at their best they have more nutrients for you to add to your 5-a-DAY!

Frozen ready meals can be some of the cheapest quality foods around because none of the ingredients waste so the manufacturers do not charge you for the wastage! With fresh foods there is a lot of wastage – we pay a premium to cover the expense of the food that goes off in transport and storage. And it has been estimated that 30% of our food in the UK is wasted and so we must do all we can to reduce this. Frozen meals have been with us for much longer than you might think they have. The Romans and Ancient Chinese had been freezing their frozen foods in caves filled with snow for thousands of years before we thought of it!  

Thank you for your frozen food question. Click here to see where your frozen food comes from.

The New Ice Age Team