Or is it at all? I see these ads all the time talking about how there food is better because it isn’t frozen. (Example: Basically every Wendys ad.) But what’s the science behind all this?
In: 8
Huge difference.
I participated in a taste testing exhibition. One of the parts was tasting 3 of the same food and determine if it is fresh, frozen or store bought; we had 8 different foods if I remembercorrectly. This area where I live we had 200 people participated and we had something like 87 or 89% (it was high 80s) get this section correct. The person doing the study explained to us that areas where people eat a lot of farm fresh food can very well determine flavor differences in the foods, and most cities area that only get food from the store instead of a farms normally gets low 20s. So there is a flavor difference that some people can pick up on.
When you freeze food they lose some nutrition and enzymes but these enzymes are also what causes food to spoil. When you freeze fruit and vegetables you blanch them first and this will cut the enzymes off, kills micro organisms and causes nutrients lost; this also causes some vegetables to shrivel up some. Then you put them in an ice bath to stop the cooking from the blanching. Fruit will get an acid bath to prevent browning in ether limon juice, ascorbic acid or vinegar which all 3 can change taste. Then they get flash frozen.
Some people think they have the same nutrition but with the nature of how you preserve you have to lose and add things that will change them chemically and thus change in flavor and nutrients.
Add note: change isn’t necessary a bad thing ether. Like canned foods i can tell the difference between canned peach and fresh but I prefer canned. I also like frozen salmon and some cases frozen and canned fruit does better than fresh. It really does depends on what a persons is use to and prefers.
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