Getting the Most from Your Fruits and Vegetables

If you’re making the effort to eat the recommended 9 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, good for you! Here are a few tips to help you make sure you get the maximum health benefits from them.



Fresh vs. Canned or Frozen

We used to think that fresh produce was, without exception, nutritionally superior. That turns out to be too broad a generalization. Partly it depends on how long the produce is in transit to your local supermarket and how long it has sat on the shelf.



Produce that is frozen right after harvest may be more nutritious than “fresh”. Just a week after harvest, vegetables have lost up to 75% of their vitamin C content.



It turns out that even canned fruit and vegetables are nutritionally comparable to “fresh”. In a few instances, canned is even better. Canned tomatoes, for example, have more bio-available lycopene because the fruit’s cell walls are dissolved during canning.



Canned cherries are nutritionally equivalent to fresh as long as you use the juice along with the fruit. Again because the cell walls are dissolved in the canning process, some of the nutrients leak out into the juice.



Tags: antiaging foods, fresh vs. canned or frozen, anti-cancer food