It’s official. When a New York Times piece advocates using frozen instead of fresh vegetables, you know we’re in a recession. When the Dining section does the same you can call it a Depression.
The engrossing Health section piece about eating nutritiously for less, suggested using frozen veggies for a few reasons. The nutritional benefit was new to me:
Not only do canned and frozen versions usually cost less and require less preparation, but nutrient value is as good or better and less food is wasted. Fresh produce is often harvested before it is fully ripe and so comes to the consumer with fewer than optimal nutrients. But fruits and vegetables that are canned or frozen are picked at the peak of ripeness.
Presumably you waste fewer vegetables because you only use what you need while leaving the rest frozen. And because it’s much less perishable.
I still contend that buying fresh vegetables and doing so with a purpose in mind is the best plan. That way, you don’t have a freezer full of forasaken, half-used packages that get freezer burn. Then again, dividing foods into usable portions can help. It’s all about finding what works best for you.
I’m curious–how has the economy affected how you buy or view food, if at all?
7 Comments
Controlling food costs has always been a problem for me because of how I choose my food. My worries about deflation have me worried about my debt, and everything I can do to pay it down it helpful. So, I’m trying harder to spend less on food so that I can pay off more debt.
For years I’ve set my food budget at $10 per day. In theory, I get the cash out at the beginning of the month in $10 bills and stash them on a shelf. Each day I should grab one bill to go along with whatever money I have left over from the previous day. In practice, I still use my debit card when I don’t have enough cash. I tend to shop on principle over cost, so my food costs are significantly higher than they could be. I can easily spend $1000 a month on food without really trying. Organic buffalo tenderloin for $40 a pound, chocolate at $8 per 100 grams, even good pasta costs $8 a pound for the dried stuff.
I never have the problem of half used frozen vegetables. I see no problem in eating any amount of vegetables I want, so if I open a bag of green beans, I’ll just eat the whole thing and call it a meal by itself.
I buy my fresh vegetable in the winter months each day from my local greengrocer. In the summer months I’m lucky as it is all out of the garden with any surplus being canned or frozen, Margaret
I tend to stick with frozen veggies in the winter or whatever I can dumpster dive at the local supermarket.
In the warmer months, I buy a share of a CSA that brings fresh veggies and fruits to my door as well as having some containers with veggies growing out of them…
I need to learn how to can so I can preserve veggies for colder months.
I first learned that many frozen vegetables have higher nutrition values than fresh while I was researching my book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vegetable Gardening.” (Penguin Books, Feb. 2009) Many commercial frozen veggies are flash-frozen right in the fields or at plants near the fields, which reduces the amount of money it costs to process them. But I was still surprised by Jane Brody’s column this morning in which she advocated frozen over fresh…but of course, we have to realize it was in the context of saving money. Frozen vegetables are almost always cheaper than fresh…unless we grow them ourselves. But it’s almost impossible to find organic frozen vegetables, and until we stop relying on factory farms for our food, we will have to deal with the pesticides, herbicides and heavy-handed use of fertilizers that are wreaking havoc on the environment. So let’s press our leaders to promote home gardening – what I am calling Recovery Gardens…that is we can begin to recover our individual physical health by eating more fresh, organically-grown vegetables, we can begin to recover our individual financial health because we will spend less on our food. And by promoting neighborhood and community gardens, and the sharing of home-grown produce, we will start the process of recovering our sense of community that was part of agrarian heritage. Now, I’ll get off my soapbox.
Jonathan, you might be interested to know that the good people at Cook’s Illustrated actually found that frozen peas are fresher and taste better than the “fresh” peas you buy in the store. So, there’s at least one frozen veggie we can buy with no compromise.
I buy frozen corn, but that’s about it…I just prefer the fresh versions of almost everything(except peas!).
Where ever possible we buy fresh, but I always check where the vegtables have come from and consider food miles as well. I am OK with UK (where I am) produce and try to source organic, but I do avoid items from half way aound the world.
We need a holistic approach to our food, and I agree 100% with Dee Dee, local and organic is best for the environment AND the local economy.
I’m going to have to take the role of the skeptic here. I mean, are we talking about an eggplant from Mexico, or are we talking about an eggplant from our region? I can see that, in some instances some produce could be more nutrient dense were it to be canned or frozen than were it to be fresh. Local foods however are going to be the most nutrient dense option every time. Perhaps canning or freezing your local produce might get you that more nutrient dense product and a more shelf-stable product at the same time, but I think it’s going to vary between different kinds of produce.
As far as the economy (and more importantly, the droughts http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DEC20090210&articleId=12252 raging through the worlds food centers) has gotten me thinking more about local food systems. Developing strategies to strengthen local food systems has to do with creating new processing facilities and new policies to allow local small-scale farming to meet with local large-scale food service and distribution. I’ve also looked more towards eating seasonally rather than eating whatever looks good.