Fresh produce has a natural appeal to many people.
Truthfully, it probably does sound a little bit better than canned or frozen fruits and
vegetables, but just because something is fresh doesn't necessarily mean that it's more
nutritious than if it's frozen, but it also doesn't mean that it isn't either.
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This is a common question that I get from my clients.
Does it matter?
Should I get frozen?
Should I get fresh?
Is it gonna make any difference?
There are pros and there are cons to both, so make sure to stick around at the end of
the video so that you get all the information really quickly.
I am curious to know which one do you prefer fresh or frozen?
Let me know below in the comments.
Why do people typically think that fresh is better than frozen?
Well, frozen typically seems to imply that there are preservatives.
It's been processed and in most cases things that are less processed and don't have preservatives
are usually better for us.
I want to start off by saying why fresh or frozen in most cases would be fine.
Either way.
Fruits and vegetables, they reach your store shelves in many different ways.
They have multiple methods of getting these things delivered to you and each one has their
own pros and cons and the truth is is that the method that works best for one type of
fruit and vegetable may not be the method that works best for another type of fruit
and vegetable.
Because of this, there are some nutrient differences between fresh and frozen when you're talking
about fruits and vegetables, but overall they are relatively similar and whenever you're
talking about trying to break down which specific vegetable, which specific fruit is going to
be best if it's frozen or if it's fresh or if it still is good, if it's fresh, if it's
been sitting in your refrigerator for a couple of days or out on your shelf for a few days
and breaking down each one can definitely become pretty overwhelming.
And since the nutritional content between each one is pretty similar, you're really
better off for the most part, just going with whichever one best suits your needs.
Ultimately just getting in the fruits and vegetables is probably going to be a lot more
important than focusing on if you should get frozen or if you should get fresh and trying
to dive into each thing individually.
Now, this being said, in most cases it doesn't really matter.
Choose your fresh, choose your frozen.
You're going to be okay either way, even though there are some minor differences between the
two nutrient wise, but the one thing that you do probably want to pay more attention
to, especially if you are watching any of your vitamin and mineral content and your
food is going to be folate or vitamin B9 years ago, folate deficiency used to be
pretty common.
Less than half of Americans actually got what they needed for their RDAs and folate,
so they ended up taking folic acid and fortifying it into a lot of foods, especially
like refined grains being probably one of the main ones that they're using this in and
since then the deficiencies have went away.
But for people that are potentially cutting out grains, which can definitely be helpful,
but if you start to cut out grains, if that's where you were getting a lot of your sources
of folate, then you might want to start paying attention to your folate, your B9
whenever it does come to frozen fruits.
There's been a pretty interesting study that was put together where they took multiple
different types of foods and they froze them and they found out over a period of time what
happened to the folate content that was in each one of these vegetables.
To give you an example.
I'll start off with whenever they looked at peas, so they took peas and they froze them
and immediately upon freezing, what they found was about 20% of the total folate was gone
from the food itself, so just by freezing the peas, immediately, 20% of it was gone
from there.
Whenever they got to the period of six months, they found that about 95% of the folate was
gone after something being frozen pea specifically for the six month time period.
As another example, whenever they took cauliflower and only after three months of being frozen
for cauliflower, they found that it lost 98% of its folate.
One that was a little bit more stable was green beans and green beans.
They found that after six months of freezing green beans that had only lost 20% of its
total folate, and the thing is here, whenever you're buying frozen foods, we can't really
verify how long it's been frozen.
We don't know when it got frozen, how long it stayed in the warehouse, how long it took
it to make to the grocery store.
How long it's been sitting in a grocery store because things that are frozen having much
longer shelf life, so we don't know whenever you buy it, if it hasn't already been sitting
for a couple of months at the time of purchase.
So to kind of sum all this up, in most cases choosing fresh or frozen, either one is going
to be fine.
Getting in your fruits and vegetables is typically what's going to be most important.
But if you are monitoring your folate status, if you're having to pay attention to it because
you know it's low, maybe because you know you've cut out refined grains so you're not
getting as much as you were before and this situation you might want to opt for some fresh
stuff, especially whenever you're talking about like the cauliflower and the peas and
a couple of other things that I had mentioned before.
When you're looking at some of those, you might want to start opting for a little bit
more fresh and that stuff if you're needing to monitor or pay attention to your folate
status.
I believe that getting a variety of frozen and fresh produce can really help to make
sure that you're getting an adequate vitamin and mineral intake between the two.
And as I said, ultimately the best method is the one that gets you to eat your fruits
and vegetables.
Also, if you are wanting to join a community of people that are looking to be healthier,
I have created a Facebook group just for this.
All you have to do is click the link below in the description and request to join and
we talk about health, fitness, nutrition, kind of give you tips to kind of help navigate
this a sometimes tricky space.
If you found this video helpful, I would appreciate if you would smash that like button and don't
forget to subscribe and I will see you guys in the next video.