Better Freeze Your Catch

[Seacidal]

For those of you who care about the quality of the fish you catch, and are always looking for areas of improvement, here's something you might find interesting. Perhaps even a little hard to swallow?

A REVOLUTIONARY new method of freezing fish will be unveiled to seafood chiefs in Grimsby later this week.

The Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education has become the first and so far only commercial research facility in Europe licensed to use the Japanese Cells Alive System (CAS), which offers significantly improves flavour retention and causes less damage to the flesh of seafood.

The Institute has invested heavily in CAS and an associated refrigeration plant, which freezes using magnetism and modulated waves of cold air.

Conventional methods freeze from the outside in, with the result that the penetration of cold to the centre of the product becomes more difficult as the exterior freezes up.

The people behind CAS claim their method retains the texture and flavour of the food far better, because it is subject to a low intensity magnetic field, which ensures that fish and other types of food are lowered to freezing point more uniformly. This suppresses the migration of fats and oils and the formation of ice crystals.

Japanese CAS technology specialists ABI Ltd recently visited the port recently to complete the installation of its flagship technology. The Grimsby Institute has been working closely with Irish seafood companies who will be among the first to train with the new CAS system.

Lynton Perry, deputy director of commercial development at Grimsby, said: "This technology offers industry unprecedented access to research for new product development and explore new methods which could improve their business." The CAS system will be launched at the Grimsby Institute on Friday.

[atomichaggis]

How they gonna defrost it evenly?

[Seacidal]

Davie,

Great point! Perhaps using low level microwaves? Aren't they supposed to heat things from the inside? Except I don't think that applies to frozen items. Oh well, I suppose they're trying to figure something out.

I have seen advanced thawing methods using warm water, though. The thawed fish had been specially frozen (liquid N2) and when acceleration-thawed in the warm water, maintained all of its "just caught" color. It was amazing. So who knows what they might be able to come up with. Have to wait and see. This may be a bunch of hype, or something really innovative. Time will tell.

[Fondueset]

I can see great potential for weapons systems in this. Excellent for Crowd control. I feel increasingly confident that in the near future order will be fully restored.

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

I can see great potential for weapons systems in this. Excellent for Crowd control. I feel increasingly confident that in the near future order will be fully restored.

Italian technology has an answer to everything: when we wear a brown camo mask it works as a shield against that. They can control the crowd, but they can't control Fondueset and me .

[Fondueset]

Elios seemed not to know what I was talking about when I asked if they had magnetic shielding available. perhaps the technology is still secret.

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

Elios seemed not to know what I was talking about when I asked if they had magnetic shielding available. perhaps the technology is still secret.

They're actually testing it on people: last night I went to bed and realized that my wife had been instant-frozen.
But there is no contradiction in this: she's from the low-tech town of Siena.
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Traffic in downtown Siena:
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[Bill McIntyre]

Originally Posted by spaghetti

They're actually testing it on people: last night I went to bed and realized that my wife had been instant-frozen.
But there is no contradiction in this: she's from the low-tech town of Siena.
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Traffic in downtown Siena:
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Ah, Palio!

My wife and I climbed up to the top of some tower overlooking the Piazza del Campo. It was a pretty impressive sight.

[sciencemike]

Wow what an amazing technology. Combination of a NMR machine with a Flash Freezer. This will be awesome to get frozen sushi and have it frozen with no preservatives or starch replacements. I am definately excited. Just think of all the perfectly preserved products from all over the world that we will get to try now at very close to their natural states. Oysters frozen in bags to eat raw, green mangos, raw shrimp (with all the sugars still there), tuna that still bleeds when unfrozen. This will drive the price differences between fresh and frozen goods to almost zero, maybe even negative. Could you imagine paying more for frozen items than fresh? Thats the promises this technology promises. Very exciting times thats for sure.

[atomichaggis]

I'm thinking perhaps it doesn't have to defrost evenly and that all or most of the damage is done on freezing... who knows?
wonder if its a possible household technology or just one for industry.

Sciencemike, I can get raw green mangoes in Norway. You have a huge Thai community in California... no need for fancy freezers there.

[deep thinker]

Yea Davie but thats because Norway is so f#$in cold things flash freeze the moment they realize where theyre going

Back to serious topic of thread, it would be nice if this could be implemented into household items, untill then Ill just eat fish within a month of getting them
Industry wise it would be amazing to get fresh produce from other countries and not have to worry wether its gone to rubber or if its still good to eat...

[sciencemike]

So its not the defrosting that causes damage. Its the freezing of the items. Heres an explanation from what i understand about the technology and the hazards of freezing.

Ok cells are little bags of goo with sub compartments with really nasty chemicals within them. When you freeze any living thing the water starts to crystallize into ice. These ice shards grow and expand like a frozen soda can or beer bottle in your fridge does, but worse on a microscopic level they form little daggers that rip holes in the bag of goo. This breaks the separation of reactive compartments that life so desperately keeps away from each other. So the end result is you have very reactive chemicals coming in contact with tasty chemicals like fats and sugars. The end result is that even while frozen these chemicals are then reacting and ruining the flavors. Thats where this technology comes in, due to the fact that water is paramagnetic, you can cause the water molecules to orient themselves within a magnetic field. This disrupts the formation of ice daggers (or at least thats what they claim), which keeps all the reactive chemicals within a cell in their special little sacs. Keeping the sugars and fats isolated from chemicals as well from oxygen. The end result the freezing process is more like an extended refrigeration process, only colder and therefore much better.

As for the mangoes, yeah we have them you are right and thanks for pointing that out, thats not what i was intending to mean. I really meant that things will be able to be picked on the day its ripe/unripe and be kept that way for very long time without suffering the losses associated with freezing. So green mangoes in Norway taste like green mangoes in Thailand or Mexico, and not a little bit like cardboard, because they are picked 3 weeks before they are ready so they can be shipped and distributed.

[atomichaggis]

That was what I was thinking... only far less able to explain how I arrived at that lol.

P.S. I know a lot of green mangoes are DHL'ed from Thailand. Still never as good but then I used to grow em and I'm a sentimental one.

[Fondueset]

My agents have been sent to aquire this technology. When I incorporate it into my Super-Projecto-Ray and load it into my super-ramjet powered Zeppelin, EG-1 (Evil Genius) I will freeze entire populations then move them all around and unfreeze them! I will start in Washington DC by freezing all the politicians and putting them in the wrong bathrooms.. Muahahahahahahahahahaha Muahahahahahahaha... Muahahahaahhaahahahahahhahahmuhahahahahaha..ahum.. .er ..mooo...ha!

[sciencemike]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

My agents have been sent to aquire this technology. When I incorporate it into my Super-Projecto-Ray and load it into my super-ramjet powered Zeppelin, EG-1 (Evil Genius) I will freeze entire populations then move them all around and unfreeze them! I will start in Washington DC by freezing all the politicians and putting them in the wrong bathrooms.. Muahahahahahahahahahaha Muahahahahahahaha... Muahahahaahhaahahahahahhahahmuhahahahahaha..ahum.. .er ..mooo...ha!

But if it becomes ALL girls in the mens DC bathrooms, what reason would Larry Craig have for going in there any more? First the paiges, now the bathroom fun, your evil plans are gonna mess up his last remaining reason for being in Congress, and he might take back, his taken back resignation now.