Food is food, frozen or not.
It irritates me a little that there’s a stigma against frozen food. Like, you’re somehow never eating properly unless you prepare full-course meals from the freshest ingredients. Certainly, if you have the time, energy, skills, and perhaps most importantly, money to be able to eat 100% farm-to-table fresh food, then yeah, go ahead. But there’s nothing wrong with choosing to go frozen instead. In fact, frozen food has its own important benefits.
For one thing, certain frozen produce like fruits and vegetables may actually be slightly more nutritious than their fresh counterparts, at least depending on a few factors. When produce is frozen, it’s frozen at the peak of its freshness, so all of its nutritional value is preserved until it’s time to use it. Fresh produce is very nutritious, obviously, but that freshness gradually declines the longer it’s been sitting on rack, and that’s not even considering how long it was probably sitting on a truck. Of course, the caveat there is that frozen produce should still be organic and not have any wacky preservatives.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, frozen food saves both time and money. When you’re holding down a nine to five job on your own, you just don’t always have the time or resources to put together a home cooked meal. Food is food; as long as it tastes good and is nutritious, then who cares if its was prepared in a pot or thawed in an oven? Don’t be a cooking elitist, we already have too many of those out there.
Finally, frozen food is surprisingly beneficial for the environment. Did you know that spoiled food takes up more space in municipal landfills than any other kind of trash? Frozen food has a far longer shelf life that prevents spoilage from forcing you to throw it out. Granted, frozen food packaging is a bit of a waste problem in itself, but at least cardboard and such can be recycled. Can’t say the same for a moldy head of lettuce, unless, I suppose, you make your own compost.
