The Revival of Frozen Food
Next time you’re hankering for a quick and cheap meal, you may want to revisit frozen food. With organic options and cleaner ways of eating as the growing trend, food companies are changing with the times to provide healthier alternatives. Frozen foods are becoming more robust by including simpler ingredients without the artificial flavorings and chemicals.
In addition to convenience, frozen foods also have a positive impact on the environment by producing less food waste. By freezing food, we can prolong the shelf life of produce without sending it to the landfill. About 40% of all food produced in the United States goes to waste.
“Whether it’s home cooks freezing excess ingredients of their own for use at a later time, or relying on frozen produce or fruit in order to avoid having things go bad in the fridge, freezing is very helpful. Consider, too, how much less waste is generated by cooking a frozen meal in a single container or bag, compared to the waste that accompanies most takeout meals — Styrofoam or plastic containers, disposable cutlery, condiment packages, paper napkins, and plastic bags.” -treehugger
As another positive for frozen food, most produce that has been frozen happens right after harvesting thereby maximizing their nutrients. People are now able to access rich and healthy vegetables whenever they need it without having a time limit on freshness. As the baby boomer generation once outsouced dining to eating out and restaurants, millenials are looking towards bringing meals back to clean and simple eating:
“They want to eat at home. They want a pathway to some form of purity in the quality of the food at home,” said David Portalatin, food industry adviser for The NPD Group. “But yet they still want convenience because we’re still busy, we’re still in the career and family formation life stage, and we still value convenience.”
Frozen foods may have once been justified as a thing of the past but times are showing that it is having a postive impact on the way we are eating for the future.
Read full frozen food article on Treehugger