Why Are Freezers Cold?

Garden Boy asked me this when he was rummaging in the freezer for some peas. He really wanted them for dinner and was not at all convinced I would remember if he left me to it. His faith in my memory is pretty spot on, but my basic food hygiene lessons have obviously been filed away in a reasonably accessible folder of my brain as I was able to recall the following.

Lots of teeny tiny living creatures, called bacteria, make their home on food. We can't see them and they do not harm us, unless they have been on the food for too long. If bacteria are allowed to live on the food for too long they grow bigger and the food starts to turn bad. If this happens it can make us sick.

Bacteria, however, don't like the cold. In fact they dislike the cold so much that when they get cold they become really lazy and go to sleep. While they are asleep they do not grow any more and they cannot make the food turn bad.

We make freezer's really cold so that we can stop the bacteria on food growing while we store it until we want to eat it.

And, yes, I remembered the peas.