You're too exhausted to actually cook a decent meal, so you reach into the freezer and pull out a frozen dinner from the back.

你已經累到不想煮飯了，所以決定翻翻冰箱有沒有吃的，並找到了之前冰起來的食物。

Your stomach rumbles.

你飢腸轆轆。

You open the box and pull out your lasagna and. Noooo!

你打開盒子，把千層麵拿出來......不！

Freezer burn.

它凍傷了。

Everything's covered in a thick layer of stale-smelling ice crystals, and you know your dinner is ruined.

裡面全部都覆蓋著有臭味的冰霜，你知道你的晚餐毀了。

It's a common thing. Any food you leave in the freezer too long is eventually going to end up about as appealing as a dead Tauntaun.

這很常見。任何食物在冰箱放太久，最終都會像星際大戰中湯湯死在霍斯星球上。

Why, you ask?

你想問，到底為什麼會這樣？

Because it's drying up.

因為它水分被抽乾了。

See, there are frozen water molecules in your steak, or ice cream, or bag of corn.

你看，像是牛排、冰淇淋或一袋玉米中的水分子都結冰了。

And over time, in the dry air of your freezer, some of those molecules tend to sublimate -- in other words, they go directly from solid ice to water vapor.

而後經過一段時間，冰箱的冷空氣使這些水分子逐漸昇華換言之，水分子直接從冰變成水蒸氣。

You may have noticed this happening to ice cubes, too -- it's why they slowly shrink in their trays when you could've sworn you filled them up all the way.

你可能有發現冰塊也是這樣的，這就是為什麼它在製冰盒中逐漸變小，即使你製冰的時候明明就有把水裝滿。

The molecules will often then re-freeze somewhere else, like on the package or as part of the gigantic frost wall that's threatening to slowly take over your entire freezer.

水分子會在其他地方重新結凍，像是在包裝上或者是覆蓋在冰箱四周的冰霜。

But either way, your food isn't getting its moisture back -- it ends up dehydrated and discolored, not to mention puckered and gray and generally unappetizing.

無論如何，食物中的水分回不去了，它也因此脫水並且褪色，更不要說看起來很不可口的變形、變色。

You can help delay freezer burn by double-wrapping foods and sealing them in air-tight containers to reduce their exposure to air,

你可以多包幾層包或者使用密閉的容器來防止食物凍傷來減少與空氣的接觸面積，

but if you leave your food in the freezer long enough, eventually sublimation is going to ruin your dinner plans.

但如果你把食物擺在冰箱太久，最終 也會毀掉你的晚餐計畫。

The good news -- if you can call it that -- is that frozen foods don't decay, so while freezer-burned food might look and smell terrible, it's probably still safe to eat, technically.

但好消息是，冷凍的食物不會腐敗，所以食物凍傷吃下去也沒什麼關係。

Thanks for asking, and thanks especially to all of our patrons on Patreon who keep these answers coming.

謝謝你們的提問，並特別感謝我們的贊助商 Patreon 讓我們能夠繼續替大家回答問題。

If you'd like to submit questions to be answered, or get some videos a few days early, go to patreon.com/scishow.

如果你們還有待解的難題，或者想看前幾日的影片，去 patreon.com/scishow，

And don't forget to go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe!

並且不要忘記去 youtube.com/scishow 看看並訂閱喔！