The cold chain: how freezing protects nutrition

There is a common assumption that fresh always beats frozen. In practice, the picture is more nuanced, and often the opposite.

Nutrients degrade with time, not with cold

From the moment a crop is harvested, its nutritional content begins to decline. Vitamins are sensitive to heat, light and oxygen exposure. A vegetable that spends days in transit and then more days on a shelf has lost far more of its nutritional value than one cooked and frozen shortly after harvest.

Freezing effectively pauses that decline. It slows the biological and chemical activity that causes food to deteriorate, without requiring any chemical preservative to do the work.

Why we cook before freezing

Cooking our grains and beans before freezing serves two purposes. It removes hours of preparation from the customer's evening, and it stabilises the food at the point where its nutritional profile is at its most accessible.

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link

A cold chain works when temperature is maintained without interruption from our facility to the retail freezer. That is why we work closely with our retail partners on freezer standards, the quality we build in during production can only be delivered if it is maintained all the way to the point of sale.

Preservative-free is not a compromise when the cold chain holds. It is simply a better way to do it.