This article overviews the technological evolution of residential refrigerators, key national and international regulations covering them, and summarizes the information available to estimate the quality and safety deterioration in foods and beverages stored in them. At present, the national and international government standardized performance tests used to assess residential refrigerators focus on energy consumption. Efforts by refrigerator manufacturers to consider the impact of temperature fluctuation, temperature recovery, extreme ambient temperature, door openings, and other factors affecting temperature control and, thus, food safety and quality need to be harmonized, validated, and implemented as official standardized tests. Published predictive models here summarized, and describing microbial growth and other product degradation mechanisms, could be combined with energy efficiency evaluations in future science-based regulations seeking a balance between energy consumption and food preservation. While numerous mathematical models are available, this review identified a serious lack of model parameter values to allow a combined assessment of energy consumption and food preservation in residential refrigerators. Much of past research has focused on temperature abuse effects and, thus, not applicable to estimating food preservation under the prevailing temperatures in residential refrigerators. Particularly urgent is the data on the microorganisms’ response at multiple temperature levels, allowing the development of secondary models to assess the temperature effect on the safety and quality of a diverse but representative pool of products. New standardized testing procedures could then be developed to guide the design of new residential refrigerators minimizing food waste and the frequency of foodborne diseases while meeting energy consumption requirements.

本文概述了家用冰箱的技术发展，有关家用冰箱的主要国家和国际法规，并总结了可用于估算存储在其中的食品和饮料质量和安全性下降的信息。目前，国家和国际政府对用于评估家用冰箱的标准化性能测试的重点是能耗。冰箱制造商应努力考虑温度波动，温度恢复，极端环境温度，门打开以及其他影响温度控制的因素的影响，因此，食品安全和质量需要统一，验证和实施为官方标准化测试。这里发布的预测模型总结如下：并在未来基于科学的法规中，结合微生物生长和其他产品降解机理的描述，与能效评估相结合，以寻求能量消耗和食品保存之间的平衡。尽管有许多数学模型可用，但本次审查发现严重缺乏模型参数值，无法对住宅冰箱的能耗和食品保存进行综合评估。过去的许多研究都集中在温度滥用的影响上，因此不适用于估算家用电冰箱在当前温度下的食品保鲜度。特别紧急的是有关在多个温度水平下微生物反应的数据，允许开发二次模型来评估温度对多种多样但具有代表性的产品库的安全性和质量的影响。然后可以开发新的标准化测试程序，以指导新型家用冰箱的设计，从而在满足能耗要求的同时，将食物浪费和食源性疾病的发生率降至最低。