In today’s busy family homes, it is important to ensure that every member of the family consumes healthy and delicious meals, which can be challenging sometimes for the people who love to cook.

Americana Foods, the region’s leading frozen food retailer, is encouraging everyone to embrace not only frozen food products, but also to ensure people freeze more of their fresh food, avoiding wastage and creating more healthy meal choices for different occasions. The list below shows numerous ways in which frozen food can benefit the whole family.

Benefits of frozen food

1.    Frozen is often freshest! Fresh vegetables once harvested can take days to reach supermarket shelves; unfortunately the same can also apply to proteins like meat and chicken. Since bacteria starts to activate immediately, this process can cause disease and damage human cells. Frozen food, including meat and vegetables on the other hand is frozen immediately– meaning that the product is well preserved with its original health benefits and devoid of any nasty decomposition effects such as fungalor bacterial activities. In addition, food is frozen by Americana Foods using a 100 per cent natural process without the need for additional artificial preservatives

2.    Frozen food tastes as good as fresh food. A blind taste carried out by 32 UK chefs showed that there were no significant differences, when eight frozen products and their fresh equivalents were compared. In some instances, it was reported that the frozen food products tasted better.

3.    Frozen food locks in nutrients, so products keep their natural goodness for even longer. This means that meat, fruit, vegetables and dairy all contain the same nutrients when frozen as when fresh. Results have also shown that nutritional values are higher and more reliable in frozen food than fresh food. Since frozen foods lacks its freshness element, a study was conducted at the University of Georgia comparing frozen versus fresh fruits and vegetables; they mimicked consumer purchasing and storing of commonly purchased fruits and vegetables The results showed that nutritionally the frozen food was the better option.


4.    More environmentally friendly and less wasteful: Frozen food already comes prepared - pre washed and chopped, so consumers don’t have to waste water washing them. In addition, it has been estimated that households throw out more than 7 million tons of food each year; the equivalent of around 19 per cent of food purchased, by weight. The sad fact is that more than 4.2 million tons of this waste is due to issues such as buying more than is needed and lack of planning. Freezing food or buying pre-frozen can help prevent this wastage by allowing people to only use the required amount for their families need and keep the rest in the freezer for another day.

5.    Choosing frozen means more menu options: Throughout different weather conditions in different countries, not every farm can grow the same fruits and vegetable, or breed the same healthy animals for meat. Whereas frozen food, allows everyone to trade different kinds of food between countries without damaging them- meaning more choice options for consumers. In addition, freezing fruits and vegetables allows you to enjoy your favourite meal all year round without having to wait an entire year for that particular season to come back.

6.    Frozen food is convenient and cost-efficient: Freezing food is a handy way to give more food choice options throughout the week, which is great for the typical, busy family. Planning meals and thinking up innovative ways of what to cook with what’s in the freezer can be built into family activities, stimulating and boosting imagination for the whole family, as well as saving money. Every member of the family may have different preferences when it comes to their meal choices, therefore, instead of making one specific meal, frozen foods allows each member to get to cook what they want, and still have all the meals ready at the same time to have a nice family dinner.

7.    Here are just a few ways that you can use frozen foods to make cooking times simple:

•    Chop fruit and pop into bags for instant ways to make breakfast smoothies quickly and easily in a blender
•    Fresh herbs can be frozen in olive oil in ice cube trays to pop easily into dinners
•    Always separate meat portions before freezing them so that you can defrost them individually and prevent further wastage

Americana Foods provides individuals with quick and fast ways to cook meals from frozen and the company remains committed to providing safe, nutritious and ethically sourced food, bringing it to your table from across the world. Products are labelled using standardized methods on the package, with a complete list of ingredients and their nutritional values. – TradeArabia News Service