Out of the Ice Age: Technology to freeze by

Japan, Inc., July, 2004 by John Dodd

HE serves fresh carrot juice, the real stuff, which smells like it has just been pulped. It tastes great, full bodied, and I am thinking that he must be using those special juicy lbaraki organic carrots that are always so good in salads.

**********

INVENTOR NORIO OWADA hits us with the truth: "Not bad for juice frozen two years ago, is it?"

It's hard to believe. All the frozen carrot juice I have ever drunk suffered from some separation of the solids from liquid, deterioration of color, little or no aroma, and an oxidized taste that told you it wasn't fresh.

This is our introduction to CAS (Cells Alive System), Owada's heavily patented and soon to be launched ultimate food freezing system--a system which freezes so well that even delicate fish roe, cuts of steak, tofu and fresh picked peaches suffer no loss of color, texture, aroma, or of course, taste. A system so effective, that where once 5-star chefs in Tokyo were paying big bucks for chilled air-freighted produce, they are now eagerly lining up to buy CAS-frozen duck breasts and truffles from France and cod roe from Alaska.

Food security

The man behind CAS is 60-year old Owada, an engineering genius who envisions a world where food can be stockpiled for years without going bad or losing its nutritional value, where sheer distance from markets is no longer a challenge. He plans to use his invention to build a multinational network of food exporters shipping at reasonable cost produce from safe environments--such as lamb chops from New Zealand, lobsters from Tasmania, and tropical fruit from South America--all economically yet slowly shipped to the tables of Tokyo, New York and London, and all in pristine condition.

Owada tells us of Japan's dependence on other countries for 70% of her food and how food security is so important to the nation. He reminds us that after years of steady integration back into the global economy with postwar industrialization, the nation was shocked when, amid the oil crises of the 70s, Richard Nixon suddenly ordered the suspension of American soy bean shipments to Japan. This struck deep into the national psyche, and today food security is a very real government objective.

Then Owada points to another form of food security, related to the many recent outbreaks of diseases such as BSE and chicken flu. Whether or not these diseases are preventable, the fact remains that when they are detected, entire national herds must be slaughtered and disposed of. There is little opportunity for food wholesalers to provide continuous supplies of any particular staple food item, and entire sectors of the economy can be damaged. Witness the damage done to the beef bowl (gyudon) restaurant chains after shipments of US beef were halted in March 2004.

Just as there are strategic oil reserves in times of war, so Owada sees the day when in times of widespread disease, there will be a strategic food reserve as well. And CAS is the key to making it possible.

Getting to know CAS

Owada's lab is located in the Tokatsu TechnoPlaza technology complex in Chiba, about an hour northeast of Tokyo station. After the carrot juice, he takes us out back to see his baby--CAS. What we see is a large freezing unit with an LCD monitor showing an internal freezer temperature of minus 60 degrees Celsius. Inside CAS we see a bunch of large power and gas lines, highlighting the fact that this is no kitchen-variety freezing unit.

Attached to the main freezing chamber are storage units, stacked with food samples frozen anywhere between one month and three years ago. Fresh food loaded into the CAS freezing chamber is frozen by a remarkable process involving magnetism and modulated waves of cold air. The process involves supercooling the liquids inside the food (literally from the inside out), but preventing freezing, until a critical point. Then when freezing is suddenly precipitated the supercooled food item, such as a pork cutlet, will freeze in as little as fifteen minutes, about five to six times faster than conventional methods.

The cost of a basic CAS unit is about $500,000. This is about 20 to 100 percent more expensive than a conventional freezer unit. But given that normally frozen food has to be dumped after three to 12 months or so, and it doesn't taste anywhere near as good, the value of the CAS system is soon retrieved through the product's longer shelf life and sale-ability.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How is CAS different?

There are many claims of breakthroughs in freezing technology. But almost without exception, such developments consist of bigger motors and air flow, different freezer shapes, adding gases to better conduct cold air, and other developments. All these systems suffer from a primary flaw: they only freeze from the outside in, and thus the penetration of the cold to the center of a food object gets more difficult as the exterior freezes solid. As a result of the unequal interior/exterior temperatures, there is a capillary action on liquids in the food, which dries the food out as well as damaging the food cell walls--thus compromising the quality of product once it is thawed again.