That is how long your fruit and vegetables stay ‘fresh’
Fresh fruit and vegetables
Storing fruit and vegetables is not easy.
Some lose too many nutrients if you leave them for a long time, others just get better.
The best you can do? Do not leave fruit and vegetables for too long and use your eyes.
The British supermarket chain Tesco has decided not to put a ‘sustainable until’ label on 70% of their fruit and vegetables and thus wants to combat food waste. “Storing fruit and vegetables is still too complex and difficult to label.”
“Many nutrients, such as certain vitamins, fall after the products are harvested, but sometimes they can also increase,” writes Adam Hardgrave, American food safety expert in The Guardian. “If vegetables are cut from the plant, it can only go downhill. For fruit that has been harvested when it is not yet fully ripe, it can mature more during storage and the nutrients can therefore increase.”
How long fruits and vegetables can save without losing much of their nutrients is very complex and varies from product to product. “Onions, for example, can keep for months without losing nutrients. Vitamin A and iron remain fairly stable anyway, but vitamin C is lost fairly quickly.”
Refrigerator
“Most fruits and vegetables have virtue from the fridge,” says Luke LaBorde, professor of food science at Penn State University. “There are a few exceptions. Tomatoes are very sensitive to cold temperatures and will lose flavor. Bananas also lose their quality more quickly in the refrigerator.”
Eyes
The best you can do? Do not leave fruit and vegetables for too long and use your eyes. “If the spinach and broccoli still look fresh, then the nutrients are still fairly intact. In any case, still eating is always better than not eating. Fruit and vegetables contain enough fiber and other healthy substances.”
Some results:
– spinach: loses almost half of its folic acid after eight days in the refrigerator. This process is accelerated at room temperature.
– broccoli: loses 56% of its vitamin C after seven days at room temperature. Broccoli is better in the fridge. After three weeks, 80% of the vitamins are still retained.
– apples: lose 30% of their vitamin C after ten days at room temperature and 19% after three months in the refrigerator.
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