Estimated Monthly Savings: $40
Does Frozen Produce Lose Nutrients?
The University of Georgia found that refrigerated produce tends to lose more of its vitamins and minerals over time than frozen produce does. If you are going to store any produce for long periods of time, freezing is the better option. The study was done on a variety of produce including blueberries, strawberries, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, green peas, and spinach five days after vegetables were refrigerated versus frozen. The frozen produce was found to have retained more of its nutritional value than the produce that was refrigerated for the same period of time.
Long as this food was “fresh frozen” meaning that it was picked and then frozen immediately, freezing your foods is a better option for long-term storage over refrigeration.
How Much Cheaper is Frozen Produce Versus Fresh:
If a person brought frozen instead of fresh spinach for a month they are paying $1.69 for Frozen 365 Chopped Spinach (16 oz) rather than fresh spinach when paying $6.99 for Earthbound Organic Spinach (16 oz). This will add up to paying $0.11 cents for frozen spinach rather than $0.70 per ounce for fresh spinach. This same exercise could be done for any sort of produce, it will add up rapidly. Having done this exercise it’s easy to see how someone could save $40 a month on just frozen spinach, not to mention other types of produce they will buy frozen rather than fresh.
What Are Frozen Vegetables Good For?
Sure, it might make sense if you are making a spinach salad that you would want to buy fresh spinach for convenience to be able to make the salad immediately. However, if you are buying ingredients for smoothies or green vegetable drinks, frozen vegetables work just as well as fresh. Same if you are heating up vegetables to be a side dish with a meal. Cooking them in a pot on the stove or in the microwave is common practice and for this frozen vegetables will work just as well!
Buying frozen produce cannot only help preserve more of the vitamins and minerals in the produce for the long term but can also save you $40/month for each type of produce you switch over from fresh to frozen! The added nutrients and the savings make frozen produce a winner over the fresh produce supermarkets try to push on you as their healthiest option!
