Freezing Prepared Raw Meals.
Posted by Ladybird on Feb 19, 2009 · Member since Feb 2009 · 15 posts
I have a fridge full of produce that I want to prepare and freeze, as I feel the need to start a cleanse asap.
I'm looking to prepare a couple raw dishes, and I've been studying up on the idea of freezing.. Studies show, the enzyme count will decrease a little due to freezing, but there are others claiming it could be up to 50%! I just don't know who to believe! I also read that it is based on the amount of water that the produce, itself, contains. Do I prepare it, freeze it, and hope I didn't waste my time? Or do I become a really great neighbor and give all my groceries away?!
If I understand the process of enzyme decrease correctly--you should be pretty safe freeaing fruit type dishes (I do raw and freeze a lot of fruit and have never had any issues with it), but I believe vegetables lose more of their enzymes and also, in general, do not freeze well in a raw state.
We have a raw chit chat on the generall forcum--come join us!!
Thanks! I will!
I don't know if this is mentioned on the raw chit-chat (I don't venture into that thread much, as I've not dabbled much in raw foods other than, say, fresh fruit and salad), but there are actually benefits to destroying enzymes through freezing. The reason that vitamin content of plants may decrease over time (like when something gets old, or fruit that tends to be kept in cold storage forever ) is because the enzymes (slowly) degrade them (not sure why...), and freezing stops this either by denaturing the enzymes or just slowing down the reaction rate. It's supposed to be better nutritionally to freeze in-season stuff than to store it forever.
Also, I'm not really sure of the nutritional benefit of keeping enzymes in tact. Your gastric/intestinal enzymes will generally break them down anyway before your cells can absorb them; I don't know if there's much evidence out there of any epithelial cells taking in whole enzymes (especially since doing that might be pretty hazardous - who knows what the enzyme will do once in the cell!)