Surprising Findings About Fresh and Frozen Veggies

The best of all worlds, nutritionally speaking, is being able to grow your own vegetables and eating them minutes after you pick them. But not everyone has the opportunity, the time, or the inclination to do that. You may live in an urban area or in a region that gets too cold in the fall and winter to keep a garden flourishing all year round. Although you can grow a few veggies in indoor pots all year round, most of the time you will have to rely on your local supermarket or greengrocer for your vegetable needs. If you're lucky, there may be a farmer's market near you that sells fresh-picked local seasonal produce.

But how fresh can fresh be, if the vegetables are trucked in from another town, state, or even from another country? And what happens if you don't eat the fresh produce you buy for a week or more? They may taste better and look prettier than frozen veggies for a short while, but what good is that if they've lost most of their nutritional value? Vegetables can lose vitamins sitting in the fridge uneaten, particularly the fragile, water-soluble vitamins A and C. On the other hand, truly fresh, cooked veggies may be higher in vitamins than frozen veggies, as is often the case with tomatoes and carrots. And nobody can deny that fresh spinach is always better than frozen spinach for a raw salad. When it's in season, there's no comparison between fresh corn and its frozen counterpart.

Most consumers believe that fresh veggies are nutritionally superior to the frozen version, but in reality, frozen veggies are usually frozen at the peak of their flavor and nutritional value before they're shipped to stores. Frozen veggies are also a good buy when you want to eat something that's out of season, if you can't get to the store to buy fresh produce, or if you can't afford the higher prices that fresh veggies often command. Another advantage to frozen veggies is that there are usually more choices in the frozen vegetable section of your supermarket than in the produce section.

An important reason for buying frozen veggies is that they make it easier to obtain your daily quota of veggies, which, according to the U.S. government, should be at least three servings a day. That number will be even higher if you're a vegetarian or vegan. Frozen veggies generally require less preparation than fresh veggies because they're already washed, chopped, and often cooked. Having said that, one of the down sides of frozen veggies is that, although freezing will protect the color, texture, and flavor of veggies for about six months, the ice crystals that form can negatively affect their texture once they're thawed.

The nutritional value of fresh compared to frozen vegetables is virtually equal, and, in fact, frozen veggies may be better nutritionally if you're comparing not-really-fresh veggies with frozen-as-soon-as-they're-picked veggies. Incidentally, the same goes for veggies that are canned quickly after harvesting. It also depends on how you cook them. If you use a lot of water and overcook vegetables rather than steaming them in just a little water, vitamins will be lost, no matter what condition they were in before you cooked them.

Whatever you decide to eat, fresh or frozen, remember what your mother always told you: Eat your vegetables. They're good for you!!