When it comes to adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet, it can often be a challenge to prepare everything fresh. Who has time for all that washing and peeling and chopping in between working, walking the dog, and minding the kids? Many a mom, or working professional has undoubtedly wrestled a guilty conscience for skipping the produce aisle in favor of the freezer section.
I can’t help you with the corn dogs and tater tots – but if that reliance on frozen veggies is a shameful secret you’ve been hiding, today is you’re lucky day!
Speaking strictly from the perspective of flavor, give me a salad with fresh ingredients from the local farmers market any day over a bag of frozen peas. But from a nutritional standpoint, all the experts say the fruits and vegetables in the freezer cases are frozen at the peak of ripeness – giving them the same nutritional content as the produce aisle. And what that means is that the fresh-frozen debate comes down to nothing more than a matter of convenience and personal preference.
In fact, frozen vegetables as fruit can be a very easy way to make a healthy diet a lot more convenient. And that’s especially true when planning meals ahead of time, or when using ingredients that don’t keep. Frozen fruit is perfect for smoothies, and cereal - and the natural sugar is allowed. I also happen to love to make dishes with okra—but I think I’ve thrown away as much sticky, moldy okra as I’ve eaten. So, frozen okra is my new favorite frozen food item.
And one of my biggest annoyances is overripe bananas. I hate them. I only like my bananas green. But instead of tossing them in the trash when they pass into the brown stage, I wrap them up and put them in the freezer for a frozen snack.
The only caveat is making sure that the only ingredients in the bag are the fruits and vegetables themselves – no added sugar, butter, sauces or seasonings.