Are frozen meats and vegetables nutritious?

[Rabdos]

Hello!

I am looking to based my diet on frozen cooked chicken and frozen brocolli/cauliflower which are convenient and have long shelf life. I plan to microwave them and eat daily.
From my research, these are excellent options for a healthy diet (no red meat, no starchy veg, etc) but I am curious about the fact they are frozen.

Are they as nutritious as the fresh or I am wasting money and more importantly eating useless food?

Thanks!

 

[Annb]

Frozen vegetables are picked and packed in very short order so that they maintain their nutritional value more than vegetables which have been picked and packed and sent away to be sold as fresh but often by the time they reach the consumer they are days old. Frozen vegetables are not as fresh as those picked from a garden or field and taken straight to the kitchen but are fresher and more nutritious than other vegetables on the supermarket shelves. However, they generally lose out on texture and perhaps on taste as a result of the freezing process.

As far as meat and fish are concerned, the quality when frozen is often much poorer than that bought in a supermarket and that bought in a supermarket is usually poorer quality than that bought from a proper butcher. They all still have the same protein value, as far as I am aware. What you lose is flavour and texture.

Tinned food is a different issue - the process of canning vegetables does reduce the vitamin content. It also alters the texture and flavour but still may well be better nutritionally than older supposedly fresh vegetables. The same applies to tinned meat products - protein isn't seriously reduced but texture and flavour most definitely are. You also need to make sure the tinned proucts are not overly processed or contain high levels of sugar and/or salt.

 

[MimT]

Frozen vegetables are picked and packed in very short order so that they maintain their nutritional value more

^^This.

Green vegetables (peas, beans, spinach, broccoli etc) bought frozen from the supermarket are snap-frozen and more nutritious than supermarket fresh. That is, the nutrients in them are preserved at the time they're frozen (within 1 to 5 hours, not days, of picking). The taste and texture depends on how they're cooked. I find that getting the amount of water right (not too much, not too little) and the time microwaved right (by trial and error), they taste as good as supermarket fresh.

I prefer fresh to frozen meat but then I don't usually buy frozen so I might not be the best person to talk about it. I expect there are ways to prepare frozen meat for cooking that tastes as good as fresh (or almost).

IOW - go for it. Convenience is very important in my view

 

[AndBreathe]

Hello!

I am looking to based my diet on frozen cooked chicken and frozen brocolli/cauliflower which are convenient and have long shelf life. I plan to microwave them and eat daily.
From my research, these are excellent options for a healthy diet (no red meat, no starchy veg, etc) but I am curious about the fact they are frozen.

Are they as nutritious as the fresh or I am wasting money and more importantly eating useless food?

Thanks!

At home we eat very little chicken. My OH is not a fan, but I have it when he is out, for example.

What I tend to do is buy a large tray of FRESH chicken portions - legs, or thighs mainly as the breast can be dry if it has had the skin removed, and freeze each portion. I just pop each leg, or whatever I consider to be a port in a sandwich bag, then all of those little bigs into a bigger bag, so that I can track how many I have left. I find Lidl to be as good for chicken as our fabulous local butcher, because he buys it in, ready prepared, and that adds cost.

frozen veg, as already stated is excellent, and often more nutritious than fresh, because of how quickly it is frozen.

Edited to reinforce fresh checked portions to freeze. In Lidl, some of their frozen appears to include sugar, which is plain old bonkers.