by Sarah Wood

Created on: July 06, 2010

For years, their has been a debate about canned vegetables and healthy vegetables. It comes with border lines such as freshness, how they were packaged and the quality of the vegetables. I have grown up on all different types of canned vegetables and fresh ones as well and I have to say that their is nothing like the quality and taste of fresh vegetables, but for as hard as the economy is we as citizens cannot really afford fresh vegetables. So which is better? Canned vegetables or healthy vegetables?

I shop at a Winco and no where else. That is my main stop for groceries due to the price and the fact that even though it is cheaper than Walmart is still get a pretty good deal for the quality. The only time I buy canned vegetables at Winco is when they are a name brand or in a higher category. Meaning that asparagus in can usually costs about $1.40 for the name brand stuff, but their are mixed vegetables in a can that is part of Winco's cheaper sale called I think Hy-top. For me you can definitely tell the taste difference between the Hy-top brand in the canned category than you can with the name brand stuff. The Hy-Top tastes like literally aluminum and the name brands usually taste like normal vegetables with a slight canning taste. In reality, frozen vegetables are better than both the majority of the time when it comes to things like Spinach because during the process of freezing vegetables they can trap in all the yummy nutrients that we need while fresh vegetables will go bad if left unused or remained out on the counter.

Canned vegetables have been proving in recent years to end up loosing most of their nutrition volume due to the extensive heating during the canning process. Not to mention the fact that most canned vegetables contain tons of additives and sweeteners as well. The problem with fresh vegetables(like buying them from a grocery store) comes to how they were grown. Now in days, they can actually add steroids to the vegetables to help them grow bigger and brighter and while they sit on the  shelves you are adding to how many times someone puts their hand on a vegetable. Meaning that not only are you eating what people are putting their hands on, but if you don't vigorously wash it you can dirt and dust in your system.

In reality, I would rather go to the farmers market and buy fresh vegetables or grow my own. I live in a tiny apartment so I can't really grow my own, but we have downtown what is called Saturday Market. It means that all the local farmers and whoever else is trying to sell anything can come downtown and sell the things they grow or make. It is also cheaper in reality to buy fresh vegetables from the farmers market because usually their is not a "in between" company that has to make a profit off of them. When it comes to buying vegetables frozen, I would rather do that at say Winco because we do not always use fresh vegetables right away and they tend to go bad.

So in conclusion, fresh vegetables are ten times better than canned vegetables. Due to the nutrients that are still in the vegetables and the fact that they are usually packaged nice and neat. You can definitely taste the difference of the sweetness in the actual vegetables than you can in the canned ones. To me their is a huge sugary difference. Also, not to mention, after you eat fresh vegetables you will much better about the fact that (depending on where you bought it) their are not really any added additives or sweeteners to the vegetables.

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