Food Products and their Preservation by Refrigeration

Why and how do we use refrigerating techniques to conserve food? Refrigeration is not a goal in itself but simply a means of prolonging the usable life of food. Of course, it does achieve other goals, but to a great extent, dealing with refrigeration is dealing with improvements in the quality of human life and optimizing conditions for human comfort: it serves computer installations, laboratories and hospitals, as well as conserving medicines and food. It is essential for a refrigeration engineer to have some background knowledge about life in general and the composition of food products in particular.