Freezing Food: Healthy or Not

Greetings ~ It's not the freezing that removes the nutrients, it's the processing of the foods prior or the cooking after. Freezing does affect the structure of foods and will sometimes affect the way it feels in your mouth (mainly cream based items, most people can not tell the difference between fresh or frozen meats). If you are purchasing pre-frozen raw foods, look for minimally processed foods, especially with meat as they like to inject them with a sodium mixture. If you are freezing your own fresh meats, yes, just wash, dry and wrap securely. When fresh chicken or meat go on sale, I buy up a bunch and pre-prep it in different ways (pound chicken cutlets, cut up stew meat, cut up fajita strips, etc.), then freeze. And I often over cook meals and then portion them out and freeze them. And remember, if you are cooking vegetables in water, and then use that water for your soup or stew, you are still getting all the nutrients that were 'cooked out'.

You know I've heard ALL that before too. But, it makes life SO much easier to freeze things like soups, stews, casseroles and large quantities of rice and veggies. I do this for me too, it's much cheaper to buy larger quantities and freeze.

I do it, my Mom did it and we're all pretty healhty eaters.

With most items, like veggies, no matter how you cook them they lose a lot of the nutrients that we value. However, it's totally fine and healthy. I think it's the pre-cooked frozen food that you could buy at the market that is not super healhty. They have a lot of preservatives and such to maintain color and consistency.

Hope that helps.

My feeling is that fresh will always be the most healthy. However, people have been freezing for years. And pre-freezers, they salted meats by means of preserving and left it sitting out (gross). I don't think they used to have all theories we do today about how long to keep food. I remember my grandmother tasting the a lot of food to see if it were still good. As for me, if it is close to the expiration date, I tend to throw it out. I often think how consciences we are today about what we eat, while our ancestors ate pork as a regular meat and then used the grease to cook with, while they left it sitting in a jar on the stove. I don't even own a bottle of cooking (vegetable) oil, everything is done with a splash of olive oil and that is it.

I think you are fine with freezing your food.

Actually, when it comes to fruits and vegetables, frozen can actually be better for you. That's because they are picked at the peak of freshness and frozen immediately so majority of the nutriets are retained. Much of the produce you buy at the grocery store has been picked/harvested days ago and it loses nutritional value each day. If you are going to freeze meals, just make sure you do so right after you cook it instead of waiting a day or two.

There are lots of ways that you can prepare food in advance and not cook it yet but freeze it and then when you are ready you can defrost it and cook it or cook it straight out (depending on what it is) However once something has been frozen and thawed (cooked after frozen too) it should not be reheated and consumed in most cases. savingdinner.com has a whole menu of prep ahead meals that are frozen and then cooked.