Are Frozen Vegetables as Nutritious as Fresh? We Took a Look at the Science

We all know the health perks of eating more vegetables: A wealth of research has found diets rich in fruits and vegetables lower blood pressure, decrease risk of heart disease, can reduce blood cholesterol levels, and may offer protection against certain types of cancers.

But all that means just fresh vegetables, right? Frozen veggies must not be as nutritious as plants plucked straight off the farm. Well, not so fast, says science.

The Claim: Frozen Food Is Just as Good as Fresh

Research from the University of Georgia, funded by the Frozen Food Foundation, looked at the nutritional value of supermarket produce over the course of two years at various stages: when they were fresh; in the fridge for five days; and frozen. The Frozen Food Foundation selected the nutritional variables to look at as well as the produce (broccoli, cauliflower, corn, green beans, green peas, spinach, blueberries, and strawberries were studied).

The resulting study, published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, found that all three methods of storing for the selected produce are generally nutritionally equal to one another.

Read more: Selected Nutrient Analyses of Fresh, Fresh-Stored, and Frozen Fruits and Vegetables from Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

The goal of the study, said corresponding author Ron Pegg, is to disprove the assumption that frozen produce is significantly less nutritious than fresh produce.

“There is a misconception out there that if you freeze [produce], you are losing the nutrients, the vitamins, and the minerals,” says Pegg, who designed the study. “And that fresh is much better than the frozen. That is not the case at all.”

One surprising finding, however, was that some frozen vegetables — like English green peas and green beans — actually offered higher levels of nutrients than their fresh counterparts stored in the fridge. Pegg, who calls the freezing process “Mother Nature’s pause button,” explains that frozen produce arrives at the processing plant “at the peak of ripeness.” Because of this, sometimes produce has higher values of nutrition than what is found in the supermarket. Green peas, for example, have been found to lose 52 percent of their “wet weight” 24 to 48 hours after being picked.

“To us this is very intuitive, because the produce is taken at their peak ripeness and frozen right away,” says Pegg.

Does This (Industry-Funded!) Claim Hold Up?

Now, we know what you’re thinking. This study was funded by the frozen food industry itself. Are the results suspect? Can we trust them?

The best way to evaluate is to look at other, similar research. Science usually moves forward not in huge leaps and breakthroughs but through slow, iterative accumulation of research findings building on each other, after all. What do other studies say?

When it comes to frozen vegetables, other research does support much of this industry-funded study. A 2015 study from University of California Davis looked into the nutritional profiles (fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc.) of eight fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables — corn, carrots, broccoli, spinach, peas, green beans, strawberries, and blueberries — and found no significant differences between the fresh and frozen produce. According to lead author Ali Bouzari, whenever fresh or frozen produce had an edge over the other, it was “slight.”

In other words, fresh and frozen are going to be quite similar in nutritional profile; the industry-funded study’s findings that some frozen food had more nutrition is probably dependent on many variables. At the end of the day, there are marginal differences between fresh and frozen produce, and much of the disparities can be accredited to an array of external variables like what point in harvest is the produce frozen or how long fresh produce has been sitting out before being purchased — fresh produce can sometimes be traveling for weeks before it makes it to a grocery store.

Bouzari, co-founder of Pilot R+D and author of Ingredient, says there’s “no clear answer” in the fresh versus frozen debate, but frozen produce is not inherently worse.

“Frozen foods are not, by definition, less nutritious than fresh food,” says Bouzari. “They can be, but it can also go the other way.”

The Really Important Thing? Just Eat More Fruits & Veggies

While the exact amount of fruits and vegetables recommended for adults varies based on several variables (age, sex, and level of physical activity), the USDA’s MyPlate — an updated advisory standard that replaced the food pyramid — recommends half a consumer’s plate to be filled with fruits and vegetables. In a 2013 report, the Center for Disease Control found that 33 percent of American adults consumed less than one serving of fruits and veggies a day.

In this context, the consumer victory lies in eating fruits and veggies to begin with. “If you’re eating fresh or frozen produce, in the grander scheme of making healthier choices, you’ve made one of the healthiest choices you can,” says Bouzari.

“Something is better than none, but a combination of fresh and frozen — you can throw some canned and 100 percent fruit juice in there too — is best,” says Marjorie Cohn, RD, CDN, and a national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics.

When it comes to fresh and frozen vegetables, there’s a shifting trend among younger diners: According to The NPD Group, millennials and Gen Zs are responsible for the growth in fresh and frozen vegetable consumption. Specifically, those under the age of 40 have increased their annual intake of fresh veggies by 52 percent and frozen vegetables by 59 percent over the past 10 years.

In comparison, those 60 and older have decreased their consumption by 30 percent and 4 percent for fresh and frozen vegetables, respectively.

When it Comes to Fresh or Frozen, Flavor Is King

While the nutritional composition of fruits and vegetables may fluctuate, consumers can rely on a different scale when deciding whether to go frozen or fresh: flavor.

“A good litmus test and a good metric is the overall quality and deliciousness of produce,” says Bouzari.

Cohn, on the other hand, recommends eating fresh produce when it’s in season and not shying away from frozen alternatives. “My general rule of thumb is that if the fruit or veggie is in peak season, eat it fresh — it’ll probably be more nutritious that time of year,” he says. “For the rest of the year, simply try to get variety and more veggies and fruits overall. Peak season and local will likely always win out on the nutrient scale.”

Why You Can’t Have Organic Food Without Soil

BY ELIOT COLEMAN  |  Agroecology, Commentary
04.13.15

Long time supporters of organic food need to realize that the ground is shifting beneath their feet. Rapidly. Ever since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was given control of the word in 2000, the integrity of the “USDA Certified Organic” label has been on a downhill slope.

We now have 4,000-cow dairies with very limited access to pasture and 1,000-acre vegetable fields fed fertilizers of suspicious provenance producing food that is called organic. But, even more dismaying, we also now have certified organic hydroponics.

What’s wrong with that?

For starters, there isn’t any soil in hydroponic production. One of the appeals of organic food is that it is grown in a biologically active, fertile soil. That type of soil adds immeasurably to the plants’ nutritional value.

In an ideal farming system, soils are nourished, as in the natural world, with farm-derived organic matter and mineral particles from ground rock. Green manures and cover crops are included within crop rotations to maintain biological diversity. It’s a “plant positive” rather than “pest negative” philosophy, focused on growing vigorous, healthy plants and animals imbued with all their natural powers of resistance.

The original USDA definition of “organic” stressed “soil biological activity” as one of the processes enhanced by organic practices. But to many farmers’ dismay, the agency rewrote that definition in 2002 to remove any reference to the word soil.

Then, in 2010, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), the group of farmers, scientists, and public interest advocates in charge of recommending changes to the organic standards, strenuously objected to the inclusion of soil-free farming in the standards. In their recommendation, they wrote:

The abundance of organisms in healthy, organically maintained soils form a biological network, an amazing and diverse ecology that is ‘the secret,’ the foundation of the success of organic farming accomplished without the need for synthetic insecticides, nematicides, fumigants, etc.

Despite this objection, Miles McEvoy, the director of the National Organic Program (NOP), has unilaterally allowed organic hydroponics. And many of the organic certifying agencies have jumped right on the bandwagon and started certifying hydroponic operations.

Now, investors are pouring money into hydroponic “vertical farms” where production is hermetically sealed in huge warehouses filled with LED lights and nutrient pumps.

Some of the regional certifying agencies have refused to certify hydroponic operations. That’s a step in the right direction, but what will they do when the produce from “vegetable factories” begins putting their local soil-based growers out of business?

Back in the 1990s, I engaged in long conversations with many of the organic bureaucrats who participated in establishing federal organic standards. I told them that organic should be left alone as the historical word for the overall concept. The quest to figure out how to grow the most nutritious food with the least environmental stress is still a continuing process.

I suggested that anyone selling food without chemicals should create their own label and explain the standards enforced by that label. Such a system was in use in Europe up until the late 1990s. Labels like Nature et Progres, BioFarm, Lemaire-Boucher, Demeter, and even the Swiss supermarket chain Migros, all published the standards to which their chemical-free labels adhered and enrolled farmers who sold under their label. Customers had a range of choices as to how much purity they wished to pay for.

The benefit of that system was that when new research came out, the customers could see which labels had responded, and shift their purchases as they saw fit, forcing the other labels to shape up. In other words, it was a system driven by customer pressure. If one of the labels allowed hydroponics, the customers would know and could decide for themselves, and customers who were aware of the nutritional benefits of plants grown in soil, would patronize the other labels.

Under present organic standards, customers who believe in a soil-based agriculture don’t know when their food is produced hydroponically because that information is nowhere on the label.

Fertile soil is the most important factor in organic growing because of all its known and yet to be discovered benefits on the nutritional quality of crops. Hydroponic growing removes the crucial soil factor and replaces it with soluble nutrient solutions that can in no way duplicate the complex benefits of soil.

The traditional motto of organic growing is “Feed the soil, not the plant.” Hydroponic growing is based on the opposite strategy. 2015 is International Year of Soils. Let’s mark this important milestone by insisting that the USDA keep the soil in organic farming.