How nutritious and safe are frozen fruits and vegetables?

Frozen fruits and vegetables have been developing rapidly in the domestic market in recent years, but they are still unfamiliar to the traditional Chinese table. Chinese people generally believe that fresh vegetables and fruits are "rich in nutrients" and that "grown from the ground" must be safer and more reliable than "processed" ones. However, the biggest difference between frozen processing technology and other technologies is high nutrition and safety, so the frozen fruits and vegetables sold in supermarket freezers may really be fresher, more nutritious and safer than the fruits and vegetables that have been kept in the refrigerator for three to five days at home.

First of all, it is necessary to clarify that the frozen processing technology is a "primary processing of agricultural products" technology, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the relevant documents on the definition of primary processing of agricultural products refers to "not greatly change the physical state of agricultural products, without the loss of agricultural products within the nutrients of a processing method". Therefore, the processing of frozen fruits and vegetables only involves the main process of "harvesting - pre-cooling - cleaning - sorting - peeling and de-core - cutting - freezing". As a result of a long time in -18 ℃ under the low temperature storage, so that frozen fruits and vegetables in the storage process is not easy to breed surface microorganisms, but also not easy to nutritional deterioration. This is because the growth and reproduction of microorganisms, the plant's own metabolism and external oxidative reactions are greatly reduced at low temperatures, reaching an almost dormant state. Most of the reported studies indicate that the loss of nutrients other than lipids is less than 5% when stored at -18℃. Fruits and vegetables generally contain vitamin C, for example, in the frozen strawberries, peas, broccoli up to a few months or even more than a dozen months in the storage and transportation period, the absolute value of vitamin C will not change much. Therefore, frozen fruit and vegetable technology is also a suitable way for long time and long distance transportation.