are the Birds Eye adverts right - am i better off feeding DD frozen veg than fresh?

[AitchTwoOh]

i do try to buy at the farmers' market to keep our veggies local, but quite a few come from the fruit shop via Spain, italy etc.

i'm really interested to know if i woudl be better off buying frozen than non-local fresh?

please don't ask me to get a veggie box, though. i used to get one, couldn't stand the turnip in the end...

I love having veg in the freezer as I don't have to worry about using it up within a week. I just find it more convenient.

Also Waitrose do a great range of frozen veg.

I just read that last sentence - how sad has my life become??!!!!!!

I feed mine frozen veg and get frozen and fresh organic when I can. I'm on income support so just cut back on other stuff so I can get organic veg/fruit and milk. I heard it's better to get frozen so would be intersted to hear others views too.

it's true about peas, because peas spoil so quickly, but most other veg tastes better fresh imo.

did you read that thing in the paper about farmers buying stuff from wholesale and supermarkets to sell at farmers markets?

frozen has a tendancy to be soggy unless it has lots of carbs like peas and sweetcorn.

babymonkey refuses to eat all frozen veg except peas. I find it is a bit mushier than fresh (but would love to know that it's just me doing it wrong )

like DT says only some veg freezes well, you don't see much in the way of carrots or courgettes. nice ones like peas and beans prob are better. waitrose is fab, artichoke hearts yum.

Frozen peas are generally way better than fresh but broccoli & carrots are better fresh.

Beans generally seem to come from eg Kenya though, so even if fresh are better, frozen are more likely to be local-ish.

(My kids eat frozen peas frozen, like sweeties )

i think i was really meaning from a vitamin-y perspective and obviously didn't explain it well. for example, has my organic broccoli from spain got fewer vitamins than the stuff in the freezer section?
i love frozen peas, by the way, as does my dd. and those frozen steam fresh bags are good, but i generally think of frozen veg as a stand-by, whereas if those ads are to be believed they are actually more nutritious than the fresh airfreighted stuff...

some vitamins do degrade over time, but I'm pretty sure the differnce is minimal unless hyou keep your veg for weeks on end. it doesn't take long for the brocolli to arrive from spain these days.

The frozen-on-the-spot ("sweet as the moment when the pod went pop") is fresher than unfrozen, definitely.

However some frozen veg isn't as nice when cooked as fresh is - even if it is fresher - eg broccoli & carrots.

HTH

but what about apples...? i'm sure i read somewhere that they are kept for yonks and then all ripened in a warehouse. [whiny] [annoying] [getting the answers she was hoping for, however]

Aitch, get an allotment or a veg patch in the garden and grow your own (I'd like to, but I kill everything that comes into contact with my not-so green fingers!)

actually, I say that - I have read that vits degrade if you peel fruit/veg. so dunno about the unpeeled stuff.

Apples are kept chilled or else imported - they have to be or we would only get them in the autumn

apples DO keep, we have just finished the last from my dad's orchard - kept the old way, wrapped in newspaper and stored in a shed

Thought I would throw this one in the pot.

The same amount of CO2 emmissions are made flying 1 punnet of strawbs from NZ, as 4 school runs. So organic produce from abroad isn't as 'green' as we think.

Just when we were proud to be organic, we have to start thinking about our carbon footprints!!

Fresh veg is better, both in taste and nutrition.
But very little veg in supermarkets is fresh, and a lot of the stuff that comes "direct" from farmers isn't exactly picked that morning.

well you see that's also a part of it, that's why i never get grean beans any more...

oh GOD, i'm going to have to get a veg box again, amn't i? turnip surprise here we come... [ignoring rumours of farmers roughing up warehouse veg and selling them at markets]

I'm going to give up eating everything except the things I find in my garden - dead birds, bugs, grass and a few bits of moss. Then I'll be truly saintly and will have a shiny halo (and will be a size less than zero in about a week!!! )

depends...if u have peas in your garden then no frozen is not better than fresh as you can just pick as u need, but if you are getting them from sainsbo anyway then they are better frozen as birds eye claim to freeze pretty much at the farm so vits don't degenerate

ChasingRabbits, if you have just finished the newspapered ones from last autumn, what will you do between now and Sept? Hey? Hey?

she'll be chasing rabbits for their secret stash of carrots

just making the point that they do last a while - 6mo of the year with apples is pretty good, a few months break and then you move onto soft fruit, strawberries, raspberries blah blah

i buy my carrots from tesco, dont like having to peel my dad's tiny knobbly ones

I'm just jealous of your fresh fruit stash. I'm off outside to nibble on some dangerous looking red berries.......