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Pre-Cut Vegetables


Guest Theo

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Does anyone have any solid info on the nutritional quality of non-frozen vegetables bought pre-chopped? One often hears that there is massive nutrient loss, but I'm not sure if this claim has any real scientific validity.

 

I couldn't find anything on PubMed, but I did find this reference to a article published in the Journal of Nutrition.

 

http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/cutveg.htm

 

If true, the level of nutrient loss described (at least on this web page) strike me as a pretty reasonable tradeoff for the convenience gained: a 10 to 25% nutrient loss spread out over the time it takes for the vegetables to become basically inedible anyway.

 

On the other hand there's this:

 

http://www.japantoday.com/category/health/view/are-pre-cut-vegetables-doing-our-bodies-more-harm-than-good

 

Which suggests that while buying pre-cut vegetables isn't necessarily a bad, it is important to look at how the "fresh" food may have been chemically treated.

 

Oh, and if anyone has any specific info on this, I would be particularly interested in B-group vitamin loss in pre-choped mushrooms!

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Does anyone have any solid info on the nutritional quality of non-frozen vegetables bought pre-chopped? One often hears that there is massive nutrient loss, but I'm not sure if this claim has any real scientific validity.

 

I couldn't find anything on PubMed, but I did find this reference to a article published in the Journal of Nutrition.

 

http://nutrition.abo...st/f/cutveg.htm

 

If true, the level of nutrient loss described (at least on this web page) strike me as a pretty reasonable tradeoff for the convenience gained: a 10 to 25% nutrient loss spread out over the time it takes for the vegetables to become basically inedible anyway.

 

On the other hand there's this:

 

http://www.japantoda...-harm-than-good

 

Which suggests that while buying pre-cut vegetables isn't necessarily a bad, it is important to look at how the "fresh" food may have been chemically treated.

 

Oh, and if anyone has any specific info on this, I would be particularly interested in B-group vitamin loss in pre-choped mushrooms!

 

I'd guess that many in the CR community get as much fresh veggies as possible and rely on frozen produce for the rest. In my own diet, I eat frozen peas daily in small quantities, but everything else is prepared from fresh organic veggies. I've read that page and the study referenced and I've always hoped that the data in cron-o-meter was accurate enough to reflect the true nutrition difference between fresh, frozen and cooked. I've heard that you can get B12 in very small quantities from sun drying mushrooms, but I'd rather just go for the B12 supplement. Why tempt fate?

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Thank you, Keith.

 

I'm aware that mushrooms are not good for B12 (I was thinking about other B group vitamins).

 

What I was really trying to get at though was whether there's significant nutrient loss when you buy fresh vegetables pre-chopped, as opposed to buying them whole and cutting them up at home. I've heard many times that there is massive nutrient loss when you buy vegetables pre-cut. For example, I recently saw it claimed online that cutting them up activated enzymes that destroyed the bulk of the nutrients, which was why it was so important to eat them as soon as possible after cutting.

 

I haven't found anything to back this claim up. I'm not sure if it's just a popular myth, or I've not been searching very well.

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