Fruits and vegetables lose their nutritional value much faster than you think! …
Before you congratulate yourself on having all those healthy fruits and veggies in the fridge, you might want to think back to when you put them in there. According to Anahad O’Connor from The New York Times, “… many fruits and vegetables experience rapid losses in their nutritional value when stored for more than a few days.”
That means the orange you just ate might have lost 50 percent of its Vitamin C by the time you eat it. Why? Partially because “the produce has usually already spent days in transport and on shelves before you buy it, said Barbara P. Klein, a professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Don’t dump your produce drawer just yet. The article recommends that you buy locally grown produce to cut down on transport effects, and, don’t stock up more than you’ll need in a week.
Or, you could do the exact opposite for the same effect. That is, buy frozen fruits and vegetables instead. Flash freezing “can slow or halt the loss of vitamins and nutrients.”
Sometimes frozen can be better than not-so-fresh — another myth destroyed!
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The New York Times, “Really? The Claim: Refrigeration preserves the nutrients o fruits and vegetables,” Anahad O’Connor, July 27, 2009
