RetroFedIs zerowaste at odds with nutrition?
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I always eat whatever thing in the fridge is closest to spoiled to ensure I waste nothing. And it’s a race because food is often already on the edge when I bring it home, to prevent waste and also save money (as it gets marked down because of the age).
I found out a friend does the opposite. She eats the freshest veg she has because she says vitimins deplete as the veg ages. She wants to maximise her nutrition.
Is freshness really significant for vitamins? Someone in my family does the same thing. Always eats the freshest food. And as a consequence she is frequently tossing food that lost the competition to be eaten early.
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Nutrition doesnt generally need to be minmaxed; if youre eating a fairly balanced, varied diet and not having nutritional problems or health problems that could be contributed to by nutrition I wouldn’t really worry about it
You can eat things before they start to go bad and still get valuable nutrition out of them
generally, you have to be avoiding particular vitamins / minerals for an extended period to end up with a deficiency. (b12 is maybe an extreme example, but a person could have liver stores of b12 that can last them years of no b12 intake before developing a deficiency!)
so to “maximise nutrition”, it’s more important to put the emphasis on a varied diet, rather than on eating the freshest of fresh foods.
that could change if you have specific problems with absorbing particular vitamins or minerals, but if that’s not the case, i’d say throwing away edible food is being overly cautious.
editing to add: happy cake day, activistPnk!
That’s not really what’s happening. People who eat the freshest food first don’t toss edible food. They still wait until it’s rotten before tossing. It’s just that when you eat the freshest food first, more food ends up reaching the spoiled state.
I’m afraid it’s a fake cake day to throw off the doxxers (who now know that I was born on one of the other 364 days).
ahh, fair. either way, there’s still good nutritional value to be had out of making a big stew / soup / etc out of veggies before they go stale!
and happy fake day in that case, lol 🍰
I can’t imagine that the amount of vitamins lost would be so great as to justify throwing away food. Or maybe I’m just poor. The only food I can afford to throw away is food that would definitely make me sick if I ate it.
According ro research inspired by one of the scientists kids, nutrients and vitamins rise when exposed to sunlight, and deteriorate when in a dark fridge.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/your-fruits-and-vegetables-can-tell-day-from-nightand-even-get-jet-lag-1424660/
I appreciate the link but I didn’t quite catch the nutrition analysis. They did not seem to state outright that nutrients rise, though they say the daylit food has more anti-carcinogens. Are you infering that the tissue loss implies a loss of nutrition?
There was a finding in research a couple decades ago on mushrooms, which accumulate vitamin E or D under sunlight. I forgot which but it the same vitamin we directly get from sun exposure.
But then we must work out how to exploit this knowledge. Mushrooms need to be refrigerated. Should they be in a fridge with a glass door? Or does the glass block most of the UV which is likely the key ingredient anyway? I keep them in a dark fridge but if insects are not around I will take them out of the fridge in the morning so they get sunlight in their final day.
Potatoes need to be kept in darkness to slow sprouting. But I wonder if I should treat them like mushrooms and give them a final day or two of light.
It wasnt the link i was looking for. I read an norwegian article a few years ago. What they ended up with was that light did affect. This also goes for taste imo
Just don’t buy more than you can reasonably eat and it really isn’t going to matter
Well I have no problem stuffing my face. If I had a robot chef there would be no problem at all. But anticipating my future motivation to prepare the food is where it gets dicey.
I’m familiar with this problem and it still happens sometimes. I’ve partially solved it by buying groceries more frequently, and by cooking stuff the day I bought it, even if it’s for eating it one or two days after. Some foods I’ve replaced, like freezer spinach instead of fresh or pots of yoghurt smaller than a kilogram.
That’s just to throw out less, the whole vitamin thing seems pointless if you don’t have deficiencies.
It’s probably true, some vitamins might bget lost, but likely not super significant.
IMO it’s a waste of time and money to optimize for vitamins unless you took a blood test, and found out about specific deficiencies.
There are way too many kinds of vitamins and placebo involved to be able to guess what specific vegies, if any, you need to minmax for your health.
Smart shopping and prompt consumption of leftovers would probably satisfy both camps? Ex. I eat leftovers from last night’s dinner for lunch the next day. Also veggies and whatnot can last a day or a few. They don’t tank in value as fast as cars after they’re driven off the lot 😅
Not exactly sure what this implies. I buy edgy food which was slow to move off the shelf so the price gets cut down in order to make it move. It’s cheap¹ and mitigates food waste outside my house. If by smart shopping you mean to buy the freshest food, well then that would prioritise nutrition over rescuing local food from waste. Which is smart is not obvious to me.
My kitchen becomes like a ER triage to eat food before it spoils. And sometimes I have to do surgery and make sculptures. That is, carving decayed parts out of partially ruined food. It’s food in its least nutritional state, but there is still something to be said for training your immune system.
Leftovers the next day risks giving you more of the same nutrition you still have traversing your body from the previous meal. So I deliberately skip a day or two on leftovers to ensure the nutrients are replenished when they are needed more (which is after they left the system). Leftovers are also less urgent because the cooking kills the baddies and enables the spoilage clock to be reset.
¹ Since the edgy food is generally ½-off, it’s fair to say I can buy twice as much for the same price. I don’t really know if that more or less than compensates for the age-induced decline of vitamins.
Pretty sure frozen will always be the most nutritious, most vitamins freeze well and don’t deteriorate while frozen.
I think C degrades slightly during freezing, but like, that’s a really easy one to get. Unless you’re going on an extended voyage into the Arctic and need to stave off scurvy, you’ll be fine losing a little bit of C. Everything else preserves pretty well.