Today's Topics

What is Healthy?

Is sushi healthy?  Are canned fruits healthy? Are frozen vegetables healthy?

Well one thing I tell you is that fresh is definitely the way to go and something you should always eat now matter what type of food it is.  A lot of canned and frozen foods, whether its fruits, vegetables, or anything else, lack nutrients that your body needs.  They also usually contain tons of preservatives and large amounts of salt and sodium.  When picking food you should always go for the freshest most organic food, if that is not an option then frozen food should be your second choice and if that is not available either then you can go with canned foods, we do not want you to starve.  Canned goods are starting to get phased out and there is good reason for doing so.  Canned foods often go through a cooking process with destroys many vitamins and nutrients, during this cooking process up to half of the vitamins can be destroyed, vitamins that your body needs.  Then after the food is placed in the can and all of those preservatives and salts are added, the can now sits on a shelf and can be months sometimes even years before the food is actually consumed and during this time the food can lose another 30% of its original vitamins so that you are down to just 20% of what you should be getting which means you will have to eat over three times as much to get the same amount of vitamins.  

When fruits and vegetables are picked, no matter what, they will loose nutrients too.  Because of this we recommend that you always eat foods that have been picked within the past two weeks, which we know isn't always easy to do.  Even fresh produce can lose up to 50% of its nutrients after two weeks so it is always healthiest to eat it as fresh as possible.  Another process that helps retain the vitamins is if the produce is quickly frozen soon after it is picked which is why frozen foods are better than canned foods.  Also to stay healthy it is best to eat a variety of different fresh foods, all foods have different vitamins at different levels so you get a wide variety.

The most important thing to consider when deciding which is better to eat is the amount of time since the food was harvested or picked and we know this is not always easy.  If you are able to get frozen foods that are frozen within hours of being picked  you can get a pretty good amount of the original nutrients from the food. 
Think of it similar to what you would look for at a sushi restaurant when ordering sushi.  Do you want fish that has been sitting there for days or weeks?  The healthiest sushi comes from the freshest ingredients.

So always remember to pick foods in this order.  Freshly harvested, frozen, and then lastly canned foods.