Why is refreezing food bad? What exactly is freezer burn?
Dear Straight Dope: Why is it a deadly sin to refreeze anything? What will happen if you do? Dear Straight Dope: What exactly happens to food when it gets freezer-burned? — Angela ; Nabeel Ibrahim, Mountain View, California For a long time humans have known that chilling food retards spoilage, and freezing preserves it even longer, provided you don’t mind some deterioration in taste and texture. Cold helps fight two agents that ruin food: microorganisms and the food’s own enzymes. The colder you keep the food, the more likely you are to prevent spoilage from molds and bacteria, and the slower the enzymes within the food work to chemically change it. However, even in a cold refrigerator (33-40 degrees F), food will spoil, as anyone who has had to clean a few science experiments out of the crisper drawer can attest. Meat can be especially susceptible to this, as bacteria will still slowly and steadily work to ruin your food. Freezing food stops most enzyme activity and inhibits bacteria
