‘Buy Frozen’ a New Green Mantra

The Green revolution is filled with mini-movements, like buying organic and shopping local. A blog in the New York Times says the next big development is buying frozen.

The authors of the piece, Astrid Scholz, Ulf Sonesson and Peter Tyedmers are two ecological economists and one food system researcher who studied salmon to understand how to develop sustainable food systems. They found fresh salmon had twice the amount of environmental impact as frozen, due to shipping. If a consumer in Kansas wants fresh fish, it needs to travel by air, which the authors say is the world’s most carbon-intensive form of travel. When that same fish is flash frozen at sea, it can travel to the Midwest, or anywhere else, by ship, rail or trucks, which cause a much lower environmental impact. And, they say, the taste and quality is practically indistinguishable from fresh.

While I have said before that I give no love to fish; it seems logically to use this argument with things I do eat, like vegetables and fruit. And, an article on Eating Well quoted Gene Lester, Ph.D., a plant physiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Center in Weslaco, Texas, who said frozen fruits and vegetables may have more nutrients that fresh because they are frozen as soon as they are picked, while fresh produce must make the long trek to the grocery store, losing nutrients on the way.

Frozen won’t work for the raw fruits and veggies I like to eat daily, but, for the love of Mother Earth, I can start trying to incorporate more frozen produce in my stir-fry and homemade smoothies.