Hey guys!
This is Heather from HealthyEatingStartsHere.com.
So I’ve just gotten home from a trip to British Columbia in Canada and while I was
there I spent some time with a friend picking and preserving some plums and twigs.
Wow!
I may have eaten a few twigs while I was picking them.
And so it’s still summer around here but it’s getting to start to feel like fall
and I’ve just gotten back where Phil has a garden at his parents place and he got all
kinds of tomatoes going on.
So we started to talk about how do we preserve them for winter and – so we know that getting
a lot of vegetables in your diet is good and we know that getting them as fresh as possible
is the best and we know that quality is super super important so getting organic and well
grown produce is really really important.
But when it comes down to having food over the winter, what are your best options?
So that you can get some produce that is more in season, so the fall vegetables, the fog
greens and the fruits that are ripening in fall or even over winter.
Those are really important to look out for but one thing I get ask for a lot is freezing
versus canning in terms of nutrient levels and in terms of which one is healthier.
In general I would say that freezing is the better method because when you freeze foods
they’re blanch which means they’re cooked really really quickly, put in boiling water
and then taken out and put into freezer.
And if they’re sealed properly if they’re blanched properly if they’re picked right
when they’re ripe, they’re gonna be fairly - fairly ok for nutrients.
Your always gonna lose some but your gonna lose some whether you have vegetables sitting
around for a few months or whether you blanch and freeze.
So, I think freezing in general is the best option.
It’s also a really easy way to freeze your produce from your garden so for Phil’s garden
we’re probably gonna freeze those tomatoes.
And then when you go in canning, the foods are cooked quite a bit longer and there’s
usually salt, sugar, preservatives put in there because they want that food to last,
not grow bacteria and you need to do those kinds of things to make sure that doesn’t
happen.
So, when they’re cooked for a longer period of time they’re gonna lose more nutrients
and when there’s salt, sugar, preservatives put in, those aren’t necessarily the things
that you want to be eating.
The other thing with canning in particular when you buy cans in the store, they often
put a liner inside the can.
You won’t see it; it’s just really really thin plastic and they have been using BPA
which is that same plastic that they found issues with water bottles.
And then also the aluminium of the can could leach some, could leach some stuff into the
food.
So, in general freezing is better than canning.
Now the exception would be if you’re doing the canning yourself, you can control how
long the food is cook, you can control how much salt, sugar, preservatives go in there,
hopefully none.
And you can also – when you do it at home you’re not gonna be using aluminium cans,
you’re gonna be using glass, jars for the most part.
Mason jars if you’ve seen those they are incredibly handy for canning.
That’s what I use with a friend of mine to canned some plums because the only issue
with freezing is you gotta have the freezer space and as the power runs out you could
be in some trouble.
So that’s basically my thought on canning versus freezing and what I really want to
say here is that you can use all different methods for getting food over winter.
The most important thing to remember is that you wanna go over high quality foods.
That’s gonna be the most important thing in making sure you get the nutrients.
If you’re buying frozen vegetables that weren’t grown very well, they’re not gonna
have many nutrients anyway so it really comes down to quality.
And for those of you who are curious I haven’t – I don’t think showing you Phil’s garden
yet so I’m gonna take you out on a little tour of the garden.
So there some little cherry, yellow cherry tomatoes, those are Phil’s aunt, Joan and
my favorite and then we got some basil, some thyme, some parsley another type of basil.
Yet another type of basil over here, this is purple basil, some cilantro behind that’s
gone to seed and then you can see back there, there’s some winter greens, the summer greens
have finished up for the season but there’s some cabbage and some kale behind there.
So guys, what is your favorite following vegetable.
Mine is sweet potato.
I love sweet potatoes!
Let me know, leave me a comment and if you’re interested in learning more about healthy
eating you can head over to HealthyEatingStartsHere.com/success.
I’ve set up a series of seven free lessons for you guys, you just have to sign up by
email.
So go check that out!