I know that fresh vegetables are the best, followed by frozen, in terms of nutrients. But I always thought that canned, if you couldn’t get anything else, were at least somewhat good for you. At least that was the reason we were told to eat them when we were kids.
Way back when I was a child (when dinosaurs ruled the earth), in wintertime you couldn’t much get fresh vegetables. My mom mostly used frozen ones. Back then, of course, the labels didn’t have to say the amount of vitamins, minerals, calories, carbs, salt, etc.
Just today I was looking at some labels in the store, and noted once again that most of the canned vegetables contain virtually NOTHING that is nutritious. That’s right – zero or minimul vitamin A, C, D, etc. A bit of fiber, a fair amount of salt, some carbs, that’s about it. So what’s the point in having them at all? They don’t taste very good, that’s for sure.
I can’t remember the last time I opened a can of vegetables, excepting tomatoes or beans. Of course, I’m lucky to live in the land of year round farmer’s markets. I have to say though, flash frozen vegetables are pretty damn good, cheap and real convenient. Way better than the awful generic frozen mixed vegetables (hated the lima beans, mom) of my youth.
Because of the processing they go through, canned vegetables have minimal amounts of vitamins, and several other nutritional compounds are either leeched away or decompose rapidly during and after processing. You still get the fiber (from those that have it) and other basic carbs and proteins that they might have, but for the most part it’s just a way of adding some kind of variety to a meal that would otherwise be just meat and starch.
Flash frozen fresh vegetables will retain far more nutrients but these to will break down with time, and of course require refrigeration. This is only suitable for certain types of vegetables; you couldn’t flash-freeze a tomato, cause you’d just end up with mush. (I’ll sidestep the debate over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable.)
In Europe, irradiation of fruits and vegetables is regularly used to preserve both the nutritional content and viability of plant matter. There are detractors who claim that the process of irradiation also produces harmful free radicals, et cetera, but I sincerely doubt this is any worse than the use of sodium chlorate, potassium nitrate, and other preservatives used in canning, and you have a product which is overall substantially closer to “fresh picked” than by any other method of preservation. Fresh fruits and vegetables are clearly still the best from both a nutrition and flavor standpoint when you can get them, but this depends on where you live and what your budget is.
