You would think that you’d always be better off buying fresh, as opposed for frozen produce – but not always the case! After considering whether it’s important or not to buy an item organic, my second consideration is its freshness. Grocery store produce isn’t as “fresh” as we may have been led to believe and here’s why:
Store-bought produce is always picked before it’s ripe and the problem here is that at this stage, it doesn’t yet contain its optimum quota of nutrients. A fruit is at its absolute nutritional best when it’s just ripe, and the moment it’s picked, the nutrients begin to diminish. When picked before getting ripe, a fruit will never contain its maximum quota of nutrients because artificial conditions are used to ripen it – it will look ripe on the outside, but it’s not ideal on the inside. So no matter how perky and shiny those apples may look under the artificial lighting of the store, you can be sure they’re not at their nutritional best.
On the other hand, frozen produce is always picked at the ideal time when it’s ripe and ready. It is then blanched (where only a few nutrients will be killed off, and flash frozen. The flash-freezing allows the nutrients to stay stable as they are. So, in many cases, frozen produce will be be a much better option.
The exception would be farmer’s markets, where the produce is often picked the day before so that it can reach you at it’s best. That being said, you should always question your vendor, finding out where the farm is, when the produce was picked, and if it’s grown sustainably (many of them gloss-over by saying ‘no spraying’, which I don’t always believe.)
Another important factor to consider is the foods that really need to be organic. If you look at the dirty dozen list, you’ll see that berries and peaches are right up there in the most heavily pesticide-laden foods. These are smoothie staples year-round for many of us, so they really should be purchased frozen and organic.
You can, of course, blanch & freeze, or can your own fresh produce, but you need to follow careful directions on how to do it, to allow maximum freshness. For store-bought frozen or DIY frozen, always check what the eat-by-date should be, and mark it on the bag with a marker.
Obviously the best case scenario is to grow your own. Even if you can’t handle your main produce items, consider putting in a blueberry bush (you’d be surprised how many varieties to suit different regions there now are,) or at least grow some baby lettuce leaves and herbs. An Earth Box was one of my wiser investments.
Finally, cooking produce, particularly veggies, is where you’ll also lose a bunch of nutrients. The best way that I’ve found yet to retain them is to use a 360 Cookware pan, as they use a vapor-lock, waterless cooking technology, which I think it the most effective way of cooking fruits and veggies ever.
