Frozen Lasagna

The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Frozen Lasagna
The latent demand for frozen lasagna is not actual or historic sales...there will still be an international latent demand for frozen lasagna at the aggregate level...Given this overriding philosophy, we will now describe the methodology used to create the latent demand estimates for frozen lasagna. Since this methodology has been applied to a large number of categories, the rather academic discussion below is general and can be applied to a wide variety of categories, not just frozen lasagna.
~No, really. (Click the link)

Yep, I didn't feel like cooking tonight, so I threw a frozen lasagna in the oven. It happens from time to time...

Food Thoughts

Some interesting food facts:

The modern frozen food industry was born over 70 years ago, in 1930, but freezing foods as a means of preservation is a practice that has long historical roots. The first to harness the power of freezing foods beyond the winter months were the Chinese, who used ice cellars as early as 1000 B.C. The Greeks and Romans stored compressed snow in insulated cellars, and the Egyptians and Indians discovered that rapid evaporation through the porous walls of clay vessels produced ice crystals in the water inside the vessels.

But it was Clarence Birdseye and his American company that finally made frozen foods a practical reality in 1930. Legend has it that Birdseye’s interest in freezing food began in 1912, when, as a young engineer in Labrador, he often froze his catch after a day of fishing to keep it fresh. But it wasn’t until 1928 that Birdseye was successful in creating the double belt freezer, the forerunner of modern freezing technology, and not until 1930 that he finally introduced a line of frozen foods to the public. Contrary to popular belief, the line was not strictly vegetables, but included 18 cuts of meat, spinach, peas, fruits and berries, fish fillets and Blue Point oysters.

But the road to consumer acceptance of these products was a long and rocky one. The first obstacle was the retailers themselves, who were unwilling to spend the money to buy refrigerated display cases to merchandise the new products. Consumer resistance was also high, so the industry found its early savior in the institutional market. By the latter part of the 1930s, railroads and steamship lines became dumping grounds for surplus retail inventories and low or off-grade frozen products, because the frozen products were prepared before being served to diners, and customers didn’t know the food was frozen.

More