More than once a week

I no longer hate going to the grocery store. I used to – it was a grueling task with four young children, but even without the kids it was never on my favorite-things-to-do list. To not internally grumble whenever doing the food shopping, I determined to intentionally express thanks.

“Thank you God that I have a car for transport and legs to walk into the store; thank you for money to buy what we need, thank you for family to love and buy food for, thank you for such a varied selection,”

etc. That helped; still, once a week is all I can seem to muster up the gratitude for around grocery shopping. Reading that it’d be considerably better to get fresh produce more than once a week is hard to swallow. But, I just may have to change my ways.

Here’s the research behind the reason to make a change:

“The vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables begin to diminish the moment they’re harvested,” says Geri Brewster, R.D., a wellness consultant at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, New York. That means the longer you store produce, the fewer nutrients it will contain.
- After about a week in the fridge, for example, spinach retains just half of its folate and around 60 percent of its lutein (an antioxidant associated with healthy eyes), concludes a study in the Journal of Food Science.
- Broccoli loses about 62 percent of its flavonoids (antioxidant compounds that help ward off cancer and heart disease) within 10 days, according to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
“You’re better off buying smaller batches at least twice a week,” says Brewster.
If you can’t shop every few days, pick up frozen produce. These fruits and veggies are harvested at their peak and are flash-frozen immediately. Because the produce isn’t exposed to oxygen, the nutrients stay stable for a year, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis. Just be sure to avoid frozen products packed in sauces or syrups. These additions can mean extra calories from fat or sugar, and sometimes they’re high in sodium as well."

- From http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/9-most-common-kitchen-mistakes-healthy-women-make
a WebMD Feature from "Shape" Magazine