Which is more expensive and which is healthier for you, fresh or frozen food?

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As grocery prices soar amid inflation, experts have weighed in on the cost effectiveness of buying fresh or frozen foods, adding that buying frozen doesn’t necessarily mean food will lose any nutritional value.

While they agree that buying fresh food rather than the equivalent frozen version does not affect the healthiness of the food, they said shopping around between fresh and frozen sections for the cheapest price is your best bet on saving money.

CTVNews.ca scoured the websites of Canada’s three largest grocery store chains—Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro—comparing the costs of several food items. We looked at fresh foods as well as their equivalent frozen options and compared prices, using in-store brands such as President’s Choice, No Name, Compliments, Selection and Irresistibles where applicable. Loblaws prices were taken from Toronto (Dupont St. location), Sobeys prices were taken from its Voila delivery service website and Metro prices were taken from metro.ca’s My Online Groceries. All prices are per 100 grams and were recorded on March 7.

In most cases, fresh foods tended to cost more than frozen foods per 100 grams. At Loblaws, frozen green beans cost $1.10 per 100 grams compared to $1.76 per 100 grams for the fresh equivalent. At Sobeys, both fresh and frozen green beans cost $1.00 per 100 grams. And at Metro, frozen green beans cost $0.96 per 100 grams compared to $1.10 per 100 grams for fresh ones.

Frozen strawberries and blueberries cost the same at all three stores at $1.00 per 100 grams, however the price of fresh berries vary drastically. Fresh blueberries at Sobeys and Metro cost $2.35 per 100 grams, while Loblaws offers them at $1.47 per 100 grams. Fresh strawberries are cheapest at Sobeys and Metro at $1.32 per 100 grams, where at Loblaws they cost $1.76 per 100 grams.

The price of fresh sirloin steak and frozen sirloin burgers are comparable between the three stores, however shoppers can find the cheapest fresh steak option at Metro at $1.52 per 100 grams while the cheapest frozen burgers when comparing the three stores can be found at Loblaws for $2.10 per 100 grams.

FRESH VS. FROZEN: WHICH IS MOST COST EFFECTIVE?

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, told CTVNews.ca on Tuesday if shoppers are looking to get the most bang for their buck at the grocery store, doing research ahead of time is the best way to save on food costs.

“Before you show up at the freezer aisle, you don't have to really investigate as to where the cheapest carrots are or the cheapest potatoes are, it's all done for you. So, in the fresh section, if you find a very good deal and bring it home and you freeze some of it—you can't beat that. It's a little bit more work and you have to gather your intel in order to really appreciate how good of a deal you're looking at,” he said.

Charlebois says there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation he can give for shoppers looking to be savvy with their money, however he does have one piece of advice.

“If you have the time and you have the intel, go fresh. That's how you're going to save some money. If you don't have the time, if you don't understand the market all that well, and you don't want to actually put in the time to freeze everything— just go to the freezer (aisle), it's all done for you.”

He says generally, fresh food prices are more volatile, while frozen food prices are much more stable. However, it’s not always a matter of which option is cheapest but which option will save you time and energy in the long run.

“When you go to the grocery store, you don't just buy calories, you buy time. At the freezer aisle, you buy extended time, compared to fresh. But you can always freeze [your food] of course, when it's fresh. But everything is done for you in the frozen aisle. So obviously, people appreciate that,” he explained.

Charlebois says it’s a nuanced situation when comparing the price of fresh food to frozen food, there is no clear option that will always be cheaper or more cost efficient when factoring in the time it takes to prepare. He also says getting the best deals on food depends on where you live and what you have access to.

“Well, of course, if you go to major urban centres, you'll probably have more choice. But it depends on your grocer, it depends on where you go,” he added.

Charlebois explains while it’s not easy to find savings by strictly buying either frozen or fresh foods at the supermarket, you can save yourself money by wasting less food.

“Food waste is probably the one thing that costs families the most money. So we are expecting the average family of four in Canada to spend about $16,000 worth of food and probably they'll end up wasting over $2,500 of that sum. And so, if you can actually reduce that you'll basically absorb the effect of inflation over two years,” he explained.

By freezing food yourself or buying frozen food, you’ll have an easier time managing your home inventory and therefore waste less, according to Charlebois.

“I think that still a lot of people think of frozen as the forbidden category, they shouldn't go there unless they have to. But, like I said, I think the quality has improved immensely over the last 20 years.”

He acknowledged a trend during the COVID-19 pandemic where people bought freezers in anticipation of either buying more frozen foods or buying fresh foods in large quantities with the intention to freeze some to eat another time.

“I mean, you can freeze basically everything,” Charlebois said. “It's just when you freeze it yourself you're making some compromises on taste of course, and flavour. But there's always an opportunity for you to conserve food much longer if you have a freezer for sure.”

FRESH VS. FROZEN: WHICH IS HEALTHIER?

Dr. Michaela Devries-Aboud, associate professor in the department of kinesiology and health sciences at the University of Waterloo, says despite any difference in taste between frozen fruits and vegetables versus fresh ones, there is virtually no difference in their nutritional value.

“One of the reasons people might perceive the health of those sorts of frozen fruits and vegetables to be lower than the fresh fruits and vegetables may be because sometimes the taste is a little different,” Devries-Aboud added.

Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, says there appears to be a misconception about frozen foods and unhealthiness.

“I don’t think there is any difference,” Tarasuk said. “I don’t think it’s about whether the food has been frozen or not, I think … it would depend what they are and how they’ve been prepared. But it’s not the physical act of freezing something that matters, so much as it is what you're choosing to eat. And you know is it something that has an excessive amount of sodium or sugar or fats? Those kinds of things are what matter in terms of health, not whether it's been frozen or not.”

Tarasuk says the food industry uses sophisticated technology to quickly freeze food and maintain its freshness. She says it’s reasonable to assume nutrient concentrations in frozen foods such as vegetables would be similar to fresh foods.

Devries-Aboud says foods are frozen in order to try and capture the best flavour and nutritional value as possible and preserve it for longer periods of time so they don’t spoil.

Using corn niblets as an example, Tarasuk says you can buy fresh corn on a cob and cut the niblets off yourself, however it’s labour intensive and time consuming to do so. Buying a bag of frozen corn niblets will save you time and energy without trading away the nutritional value of the corn itself.

“Essentially, what happens is, those vegetables get picked at the height of their freshness, and then frozen immediately,” Devries-Aboud agreed.

“I mean, you can't store things for years on end, right? But, if you're storing it for shorter periods of time, you know, months to a year, the nutrition is still maintained. Where you have to be concerned about the nutritious value of frozen [food], and to a certain extent as well, canned vegetables and fruits would be: what else is added?”

Tarasuk and Devries-Aboud both say you’re more likely to see a drop in nutritional value when buying canned corn than frozen corn, because canned goods usually have additives such as sugar or sodium to help with preservation.

“It would really depend on what the alternative is and how you're doing it. But you know, would a prepared meal be a good choice? Well, again, it would totally depend on what that meal is, and not whether it's fresh or frozen,” Tarasuk said, adding when considering a frozen option, look at the ingredients and how it was prepared.

“So, is it fried? Is it breaded? Has it had salt added to it? Has it got a sugar coating? All of those things are very, very important in terms of deciding whether it is a healthy choice or not.”

Tarasuk adds while it may or may not be the healthiest choice to buy a frozen prepared meal, it can save you time and energy, and maybe even money in some cases.

“I mean, part of the reason people—I think—are drawn to frozen, prepared foods is that they're not having to do the work of acquiring all the different ingredients and preparing the food from scratch,” Tarasuk said.

Devries-Aboud says shoppers should be looking at the ingredients of “ultra-processed foods,” such as certain kinds of frozen breaded chicken strips, to determine how healthy of a choice they are making and weighing that against their time to prepare a fresher version of the same meal.

“That’s when you start to see that there's a lot more added salt, there's a lot more added sugar and saturated fat predominantly. And those types of foods, it's generally healthier if you can make that type of thing at home,” she said. “So there is a difference between making a breaded chicken at home. Now, one caveat with the frozen chicken is that oftentimes, there's a lot of salt that's been added.”

Devries-Aboud says frozen meats sometimes have salt added to help with preservation, whereas fruits and vegetables are often frozen without additives and with negligible differences in nutritional quality.

She says with regards to the common misconception that food in the frozen aisle is always unhealthy, that is not necessarily the case.

“I think part of that has to do with the fact that in that frozen food section, you have access to very healthy frozen foods, and then access to other frozen foods that are not. And sometimes they make it look like a frozen pizza at the grocery store looks very similar to a pizza you would make at home. And so as a consumer, how do you know what would be the healthy frozen foods and then unhealthy? And we kind of get told repeatedly that frozen foods are less healthy, but we're really talking about those ultra processed foods,” Devries-Aboud said.