Twenty years ago we didn’t think about fridges much. They were small, cupboard-like, and fitted under the kitchen counter. They smelled a bit. They had a ‘freezer compartment’ - usually a solid berg of frost in which was set a broken ice-tray and an escaped oven chip - and they made that reassuring ‘thunkety humm’ noise at odd times throughout the night. In the seventies they were briefly available in avocado or chocolate brown but these experiments seemed somehow indecent. Proper, British fridges were white, occasionally rust spotted, and presented about as much an opportunity for a lifestyle statement as the draining board.

Then the Americans arrived. We had already glimpsed them in imported sitcoms: vast, cavernous hangars of fridges with wide-spaced, well-lit shelves, groaning with Budweiser, leftover Chinese food in bucket-shaped boxes and orange juice that was drunk as profligately as squash. Over-stuffed and then, all at once, over here.

Suddenly the plucky little British fridge seemed dowdy and, well, a bit sad. The manufacturers lunged at the opportunity and introduced new ‘American-Style’ fridges.  That word "style" is important.

Consumer research showed we wanted fridges that were taller than us - but our kitchens, units and even doors couldn't cope with the size of imported models so slightly smaller versions were made for the UK market.

According to market research group, Mintel, sales of "larder" fridges - tall, with no icebox - or the even more bloated "side-by-side" type with adjacent freezer wing, have entirely outstripped sales of under-the-counter models. More frighteningly they see the only limit to this invasion as the paltry size of the average UK kitchen. Big fridges, it seems, are going to keep on coming until there is no more room.

But is the recommended fridge temperature of below 5C necessarily best for keeping all food appetisingly fresh? Do we really need to store enough perishable goods to fill an American-style fridge at such a low temperature? A domestic fridge dries food out, hermetically seals smells and flavours together and - even though today's fridge is, on average, twice as fuel efficient as one bought 10 years ago - consumes significant amounts of energy. I talked to a wide range of culinary and food hygiene experts to find out what we should and shouldn't be keeping in our fridges.

Cheese:
According to foodie wisdom, good cheese is a living thing that needs to respire, to breathe good air, maybe sweat a little. People have been beaten to death at North London dinner parties for serving cheeses that have been cruelly incarcerated in the fridge. In fact, according to Patricia Michelson, Goddess of Cheese and owner of La Fromagerie, though cheese should be served at room temperature, it can be refrigerated if allowed to breathe under the cover of a damp cloth. Be careful though; its flavour can be tainted by that of other foods and of course, some of the stronger cheeses will return the favour - Camembert ice cream anyone?

Butter:
The British favour uncultured butter, which becomes rancid very quickly if not refrigerated. Unfortunately, refrigeration also gives butter the spreading qualities of a house-brick. Arguments over keeping butter either fresh or soft may have been responsible for up to 86% of UK divorces last year and are certainly to blame for the popularity of ‘spreadable’ butters - which consumers pay extra to have made tractable with vegetable oil or air bubbles while the manufacturers choke themselves to death laughing. More civilised nations prefer cultured butters made from soured milk, which have a delicious, rich flavour, often with elements of fresh grass or caramel and keep well at low room temperatures.

Eggs:
One of the triumphs of supermarket logistics is that most eggs now take around two days to get from the chicken to your basket, which means that we get fresher eggs than ever before. A fresh, free-range egg should last beautifully at room temperature for at least a week but, with the risk of salmonella, all authorities now recommend keeping them refrigerated. Those racks in the fridge door are the worst place to store eggs as constant shaking thins the whites and the smells and flavours of other foods can penetrate the porous shell. Make sure you buy fresh eggs as you need them, keep them in an airtight container on a shelf and eat within a week. Refrigeration can make eggs last for ages without ‘going off’ so many people buy them in bulk and end up eating perfectly safe but horribly stale eggs weeks later.

Meat:
Although meat should be room temperature before cooking, it should always be refrigerated if it’s not going to be cooked as soon as you get it home from the butcher. Meat should be stored on the bottom shelf so no juices can drip onto other food.

Fruit:
Fruit from temperate climates, apples for example, can be refrigerated but fruit from warmer countries can only be stored successfully at around ten degrees Celsius so a domestic fridge can wreak all sorts of havoc. Bananas go black (though they remain edible inside); avocados go reassuringly dark but stop softening and end up the colour and texture of a disarmed grenade. Melons develop black spots. Tomatoes will respond to the fridge with an exhausted sigh and almost immediately become mealy and unappetising.
All fruit can be stored in a fruit bowl or basket on the counter but be sure to store the bananas away from other produce. Bananas release ethylene, which can cause other fruit around them to overripen.

Vegetables:
Like fruit, veg from warm climates gain nothing from chilling. Marrows, courgettes, peppers, cucumbers and beans all become mushy or blackened much faster in a domestic fridge and all should be kept out in the bowl with the fruit. If, for some reason, your home lacks a root cellar, mushrooms and root veg - potatoes, parsnips and carrots etc. - should be kept at room temperature and protected from light in a paper or cloth sack.

Leftovers:
Leftover tinned food can apparently be kept in the fridge for a short while but must be transferred it to a clean, airtight container. Exposure to air once the can is opened may increase the amount of contamination from the tin lining. This applies just as much to Tiddles’ lunch as to your can of beans. Oh come on, who are we kidding here? You’re as likely to find a half-open tin of beans foodie’s fridge as a dead badger*.

Miscellaneous:
Honey, cooking oils, peanut butter and tahini will congeal unattractively in the fridge. Bread, cake and other baked products will loose moisture and take on an unpleasant rubbery texture rather than going hard and stale and chocolate develops an unsightly sugar bloom.

Refrigeration is a vital tool in the kitchen. It inhibits the action of enzymes and bacteria that make food go bad and stops people dying of food poisoning. Unfortunately, going bad is food’s way of telling us not to eat it and some of the most luxurious foods rely for flavour on the very enzymatic and bacterial processes that the fridge prevents. One man’s ‘going off’ is another foodie’s ‘ripening’. The fridge enables us to keep food longer but shouldn’t stop us buying fresh, rotating stock and using things while they are still at their best. Whether you love or loathe supermarkets, the advantage of their infrastructure is that it gets better quality food to us quicker - if we then stick it in a home morgue and wait till two days past sell-by date to eat it we lose even that benefit.

*For dead badgers see ‘meat’.