What veggies are best – fresh, frozen or tinned?
I always feel good when I’ve prepared my vegetables for dinner, It’s healthy, fresh food – what’s not to love?
Well, here’s the thing – veggies are a living organism, or were, and from the second they’ve been picked they begin to lose all their nutrients – of course they still look lovely, but when they start turning, and eventually going squelchy, that’s coming to the end of a process which has been going on since the veggie was picked.
This means of course that we’re missing out on all those nutrients we happily think we’re getting, as if we had picked and cooked straight from our garden (not an option for me – I can’t even keep a cactus!). We could of course buy daily, if we have such a thing as spare time, but we don’t actually know how long the shop has had the produce before we go round squeezing and prodding and sticking it in our trolleys, so actually the veggies could be a good few days old already – that’s several days of nutrients we could be missing out on!
There is an excellent compromise – frozen veggies! I buy veggies where I’m told they are frozen within hours of picking – that means those veggies have only lost a couple of hours of nutrients, before the remaining nutrients are locked in, ready to be cooked and gobbled up. So in effect, with frozen veggies, you are eating vegetables which were picked only a couple of hours ago, no matter how long they’ve been escaping you in the freezer 🙂
I know, I know, they lose some of their texture and their taste when they’re frozen, especially if you’ve had them for a “little” while in the bottom of the freezer, but here’s the thing, they are still nutritionally better for you than the fresh veggies you bought over the weekend. But, if we store them and cook them according to the packet instructions, this will help.
And if you’re anything like me when I’m not being as diligent with my shopping and using, buying frozen could help stop the wasted food – the food we throw away because it has begun to turn – think of the pennies we could all be saving!
And tins? – now I’m not sure if tinned veggies are preserved as quickly as frozen veggies, but they do also hold onto their nutritional value from the moment they’re preserved – so perfect for quick dinner preps, again no food wasted – follow the cooking guidelines as this has been the way the manufacturer has found their food tastes best. The only thing you might want to check out is the ingredients used for the preserving, so the tins may have higher salt for instance than you would like. And even better a can of veggies will apparently taste the same now as in 100 years – apparently! and still have the same nutritional value – providing the tin hasn’t been damaged in any way.
So, all in all, we really should not feel at all guilty about eating frozen and tinned veggies. And if you’re like me, and you love your fresh veggies – that’s all good too, maybe we should just be careful when buying our groceries and try not to over buy, that way we waste less 🙂
Trying to lose! 