Hunter Habit – For Us Once-A-Week Shoppers
Upgrade Class – Triple Dip (as many as three times)
Your Shopping Fresh Upgrade Commitment
We don’t grow our own food these days, not where I live, anyway. That means that this Shopping Fresh Upgrade will be as close as we get to having our own garden. You’re going to commit to increasing your shopping trips for fruit and veg from once a week to twice. If you do your fruit and vegetable shopping twice a week already, then you’re going to increase it to three. Three shopping trips a week for fruit and vegetables is perfect. If you don’t do fruit and veggie shopping at all then you will need to start with this Upgrade!
It’s important that when you buy your fresh fruits and veg, you’re buying from the ‘local’ section of your grocery store when possible. If you have a special market that you go to for them then that’s even better. Farmers’ markets tend to sell locally grown goods.
The Science of Freshness
So here’s why you want to ultimately be doing your fruit and vegetable shopping three times a week: nutrients. The moment a plant is separated from it’s nutrient source (vine, tree, bush, roots, etc.) it begins to lose nutrients.
In cool conditions a fruit or vegetable should take less than three days to lose 50% of it’s nutritional content. It’s even quicker if it’s warm.
If the food’s grown locally then it’s going to have spent no more than a day getting to your shop. If you buy it and stick it in your fridge when you get home, you should have two days to cook and eat it before it falls below it’s 50% nutrient value.
It’s not ‘bad’ to eat fruits and vegetables with highly depleted nutrient values – eat your fruits and veg, bottom line! But to get the nutrient value of two carrots out of a single carrot, I think we’d all admit is way better. We want the nutrient density of our foods to be as high as possible – that’s the secret to a nutritious diet.
Remember as well that not all nutrients degrade at the same rate. Vitamin C, for example, is extremely sensitive. This vitamin can’t be cooked for long periods or at high temperatures, or it degrades. Vitamin C also oxidizes, meaning that even contact with the air will destroy it. So when you leave fruit and veg for a long time, there’s almost no Vitamin C left in them.
Jungle Tip
Remember that buying frozen fruits and vegetables is often better than buying fresh. The advantage buying fresh has is that you get a great ‘fresh texture’ and ‘crispness’ with them, even if they’re not really ‘fresh’.
Foods in the standard fruit and veg section of your grocery store are shipped from around the world. To make them look nice they are picked from the vine long before they’re ripe to account for transport time. Inside, however, these lovely looking parcels of color and taste have less than 20% of the nutrient content of ‘fresh-ripe’ equivalents.
So decide what you’re using a fruits or vegetables for before you decide to buy ‘fresh’. A salad, for instance, requires fresh vegetables, even though their nutrient content might not be as high as if the ingredients had been frozen.
For more tips on how to get the most out of your fruits and vegetables, see my Fresh or Frozen article!