Like for example that I shouldn’t put eggs in the freezer for more than 8 months or meat for longer than 12 months. How does it go bad when it’s frozen? Especially considering that we find hundreds of years old things/people frozen in ice and they seem to be in pretty good condition?
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In this case, it’s *generally* not spoiling due to bacterial activity, but rather it becomes unpalatable or otherwise undesirable.
One culprit is oxidation. This is basically food ‘rusting’. Think meat and fruit turning brown.
Another issue is cellular degradation. In a normal freezer, ice inside and around the cells form crystals which break the cells and degrade the tissue.
These two problems combined are generally referred to as ‘freezer burn’. ~~They are amplified by the fact that many modern freezers *don’t continuously freeze.*. They are self-defrosting, so they come up slightly above freezing to defrost for a brief period of time. These freeze-thaw cycles can degrade the food like winters cause potholes. They also provide brief windows for slow bacterial growth.~~
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