Frozen fruits and vegetables might have just as many or even more vitamins than fresh ones, researchers have found.

"In terms of the ways humans have come up with preserving foods, freezing comes up at the top for preserving nutrients. If you can't afford fresh or live in an area where a bodega down the street is all the access to produce you can get, it's important for people to know that frozen is a viable alternative,” study author Ali Bouzari said.

The director of the Plants for Human Health Institute at North Carolina State University, Mary Ann Lila, highlighted the preservation beneficial plant compounds of freezing.

“Frozen fruits are commercially picked at the peak of ripeness and then individually quick frozen and packaged under a nitrogen atmosphere," plant physiologist and national program leader for the US Department of Agriculture, Gene Lester, said.

"Blanching keeps the bright green colors fairly bright green once they've been frozen and in storage - otherwise they can take on a grayish or brownish look," Lester added, noting that blanching may also cause the loss of 50% of vitamin C.

"If you pick vegetables at their ripeness peak, they've got their greatest abundance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals -- and that can be anywhere between 10% and 50% more than something that is commercially harvested as fresh," Lester explained.

"From a commercial standpoint, you definitely have a more nutrient-dense product than something that has likely been picked, refrigerated, then put on a truck for up to three days, then stored in a warehouse ... before arriving at a grocery store for a few days," Lester elaborated.

"When you compare fresh string beans in a store versus frozen, frozen will almost always be higher in nutrient content, because they were picked and processed at the highest point of quality and then frozen to preserve them," a professor in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University, Mario G. Ferruzzi, indicated.