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Your best and worst choices in the frozen-food aisle.
In the dead of winter, grocery shoppers often turn to the freezer aisle for outof-season produce as well as easy-toprepare entrées. But with sales of frozen foods in decline-down an estimated 5% since 2009-the industry is launching a campaign, "Frozen: How Fresh Stays Fresh," to boost awareness and promote frozen foods' nutritional benefits. How do frozen foods really stack up?
Several recent studies have confirmed what nutrition experts have long been saying about frozen fruits and vegetables: Produce from the frozen-food aisle is at least as nutritious as fresh, and certain nutrients are better preserved in frozen fruits and vegetables than in fresh produce after a few days in your fridge. Some new premium frozen meal options may also be better for you than traditional frozen "TV dinners," with ingredients such as whole grains, quinoa, sweet potatoes and kale. But those tempting frozen pizzas and burritos are still not healthy choices.
"It is like anything else in the supermarket aisles-one needs to pick and choose carefully," says Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, director of Tufts' HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory. "Doing so can yield big benefits."
HITTING "PAUSE": In a 2013 study at the University of Georgia, researchers bought fresh and private-label frozen blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, green beans, corn, spinach, cauliflower and green peas from...