Your Freezer = Essential Meal Prep Tool

Most of us people want to be healthy. We want to eat healthy, live healthy, and feel healthy. Despite this overwhelming desire, planning and preparing healthy meals still requires effort. Some say there’s not enough time, others say it’s too hard.  The reality is we simply need to learn a new skill and invest a bit of time in planning.

So today, let’s upgrade your freezer and make sure you always have healthy food at your fingertips! In this article, we’re going to talk about why and how your freezer can be your best friend in optimizing your meal planning and prepping.

Meal Planning vs. Meal Prep

Let’s first differentiate the difference between meal planning and meal prepping. Meal planning is the process of choosing what meals to eat on what day (e.g., Monday: turkey burger with roasted potatoes and salad, Tuesday: salmon with spinach and basmati rice). Meal prepping is the process of preparing and cooking those meals (e.g., a few hours on Sunday cooking for the whole week). Now that we’ve established the basics, let’s get to your freezer.

Your freezer is by often the best yet most under-utilized aspect of the kitchen. Where else can you store the components of a healthy meal for weeks without spoilage? We can stock your freezer with high-quality protein and complex carbohydrates to ensure you always have nutrient-dense food available to plan and prepare healthy meals.

Nutrient Value of Frozen Veg & Protein

While frozen vegetables typically get a bad rap, the truth is, they can be more nutritious than fresh counterparts, except for veg from a home garden! Frozen vegetables are typically picked at the height of their ripeness when bursting with vitamins and minerals. (1) The process of flash freezing locks in precious nutrients and halts the process of enzyme activity that begins to break down (and spoil) food and create histamines. Frozen fruits and vegetables are superior nutritionally to canned because the canning process results in nutrient loss. (2)

When it comes to protein, many small farms and fishing companies ship high-quality frozen meat and wild-caught fish, and you can also ask a local butcher or fishmonger to pack your protein to go straight to the freezer. The benefit of frozen protein is that it won’t spoil for quite some time and you can always access this meal staple. The one potential downside of frozen protein is the time required to defrost it. That’s where a weekly plan comes in handy (or an instant pot to cook from frozen).

Be Organized

The best way to start your meal planning efforts is to be organized! Take inventory of what you have in the house, write it down, and match up days to meals. Going back to the example above where we have a turkey burger on Monday and salmon on Tuesday, all you’d need to do is take both out on Sunday to ensure they’re defrosted and ready for cooking on their respective days. You’ll never have to defrost frozen vegetables, so they’ll be ready when you need them.

There are plenty of free, reusable meal planning templates available online. Use a whiteboard calendar posted in your kitchen to create your weekly plan.

We can only be as healthy as your kitchen allows, so prioritizing healthy meal-time staples is an important first step!

Sources 

1.    Munoz, Kissairis. “Frozen vs. Fresh Vegetables: Which Is Healthier?” Dr. Axe, 14 June 2021, draxe.com/nutrition/frozen-vs-fresh-vegetables/.

2.    “Are Frozen Vegetables Healthy? – Ask Dr. Weil.” DrWeil.com, 3 Dec 2016, www.drweil.com/diet-nutrtion/nutrition/are-frozen-vegetables-healthy/.