Is Fresh Food Best Even in Winter?

Fresh food is best – it seems obvious. It is best for both taste and nutrition. Though what does “fresh” really mean, when it comes to fruits and vegetables? To be truly fresh, produce should be eaten within a couple of days of harvesting. Yet fresh isn’t always as fresh as we might think. The time between the harvest of fruit and vegetables and consumption may be days to weeks. The process of transporting, storing, sitting on the shop’s shelf and then arriving home to lie in the fridge, can be a lengthy period. During this time, nutrients and flavour are reduced.

It is rarely possible to achieve such a quick turnaround from harvest to table, even in summer; in the coldest months it is nearly impossible. In Switzerland over winter, there is almost no choice of fresh, local greengroceries available. Certainly the shelves in the greengrocery section at the supermarkets are full, but most “fresh” produce has travelled widely or been stored for long periods before sale. Tomatoes, for example, mostly taste awful in winter, but that’s to be expected when they’ve been grown indoors using artificial heat then transported a fair distance. What, then, is the alternative?

Using frozen foods can be a better option when most truly fresh produce is out of season. They can even be more nutritious than fresh foods, which are often picked and gathered when unripe, and then transported and stored. Frozen fruit and vegetables are generally picked when they are ripe, and are immediately washed, blanched, then snap frozen to retain flavour and nutrients. Cook lightly as you would with fresh produce – either steamed, roasted or gently fried, but boiling can destroy water-soluble Vitamin C.

When buying frozen foods, inform yourself by reading the packet. What additives does the product have? Is it over-packaged? Where has the frozen food travelled from? It may literally be from the other side of the world, which makes sense if it is a food not grown in Europe. But buying, for example, frozen raspberries from another continent seems ridiculous.

A great option is to freeze locally sourced produce when in season, if that is possible, given constraints of time and freezer space.

Home or commercial preserving of fresh fruit and vegetable in tins or jars conserves food without requiring electricity to keep it edible. These may retain nutritional values comparable to fresh foods. Again, read the label carefully, as there may be added salt, sugars and other additives. And ensure that the paper label and jar or tin are recycled after use.

For winter, besides preserved or frozen produce, root vegetables are a sensible dietary addition. For something green, crunchy and with a small carbon footprint, sprouts can easily be grown in the kitchen – an enjoyable project for children.

An informative article about food miles and ethical eating can be found on The Guardian newspaper’s website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/food.ethicalliving?INTCMP=SRCH

By Andrea Snashall
Andrea is very interested in nutrition, having been a vegetarian for more than half of her life. She has two children aged 9 and 7.

Illustration by Ivy Kwok Hieber
Ivy has been an Illustrator for Mothering Matters since it appeared in a printed format.