By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3
Today I read about a new technology that sounds completely ridiculous and perfectly rational – all at the same time. Let me explain.
There’s a new dating app called “Refrigerdating,” which works in conjunction with the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator. In case you’ve never seen this appliance in person, it’s what you might call a fridge of the future – the kind of thing you might have seen in Jane and George Jetson’s kitchen. It has a touchscreen door and a built-in camera, allowing you to browse what’s inside the fridge without even opening the door.
The app developer apparently decided to marry the concept of Love Connection with modern fridge technology. By using the app, you can peek inside the fridge of your potential date to see if you find it intriguing, disgusting, weird or just plain barren. I don’t know if this dating app has a tool that lets you send messages to other users, but if it does, I imagine the conversation might go something like this:
“Hey there. You don’t know me, but I’ve seen what you’ve got behind those sexy, stainless steel doors. Looks like you’ve got a bottle of mustard from 2018. I’ve got a jar of mayo that’s right on the verge of being dangerous. Why don’t we meet in real life and see if we can get these crazy condiments together, shall we?”
As nuts as that might seem on the surface, there’s no denying that you can tell quite a bit about a person by the things with which he surrounds himself. And if there’s any truth to the old saying that “You are what you eat,” then maybe it makes perfect sense to find out what’s in a person’s fridge before you take things any further.
For example, a person who doesn’t drink might not want to go out with someone who stocks enough beer for a giant Superbowl party, even though it’s the middle of June. A health nut might not want to meet for coffee with someone whose fridge screams “cholesterol problem.” 
And someone like me, who’s easily grossed out by the smell of fish, would take one look at a fridge containing sardines and call it an automatic deal breaker. That’s not judgmental, mind you. It’s just acknowledging that there’s an acceptable way to fill a fridge, and then there are sardines.
If our family had a fancy camera fridge and strangers peeked at its contents, they’d see that we’re telling ourselves lies about leftovers. Every night after dinner, we dutifully pack up the remaining food into glass storage containers and seal them up tight, saying that it will make a great lunch in the next few days. But then those leftovers linger, and linger, and sometimes morph into something that looks more like a science experiment and less like leftover rice. Then one day, when I can’t take that level of “ewww” a second longer, I remove said leftovers and dump them down the garbage disposal while holding my breath. There are leftover lovers in the world, and there are leftover leavers. There’s no denying the refrigerated evidence.
So maybe getting up close and personal with a stranger’s refrigerator is just as good a screening process as anything else. Who am I to say two people can’t feel a spark over a shared passion for pickles? Why not get hot and heavy over hummus? It’s a big, complicated world out there, and people are bound to have different tastes. Maybe today’s singles will find eventually their match right behind the refrigerator door.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at rockwoodfiles@cox.net. Her book is available on Amazon.
If I’d used Bruce’s fridge contents as dating criteria, I never would have married him. It’s been 21+ years and my memory is fuzzy (so were the pickles, I bet), but I probably would’ve found hot dogs, buns and some leftover cheap mac and cheese mixed with tuna (eww), plus some Dr Pepper. In the freezer, ice cream (which would even the score, so I guess we’d be OK).
More power to the single person who’d let potential mates peek inside the fridge. More power to the refridgermater.