How can you tell if a certain raw food is fresh and high in nutritive value?

Question

i have a reporting to do on smart buying of raw food (fruits, veggies, meats, eggs etc.).

i need to know how to identify freshness and the nutritive value(if applicable) of certain raw foods just by using your five senses....

your answer will be a great help!!

tnx

XOXO

Ü

Answer 1

The only way is to eat it!

Answer 2

This would actually be a great question to ask your Mom, or whom-ever does most of the grocery shoping for your family!

The very best way, is to shop at Farmer's Markets, usually open on Saterday mornings.

First, use common sense...do you live at all near where the food was produced or caught?  If you live in the center of the United States, you cannot have fresh caught ocean going fish, no matter what the sign states!  It's been shipped from somewhere, and probably by truck.

Fish, should not smell "fishy."  They should be supple, and smell clean, like the ocean (this is for ocean fish).  The eyes should be clear, and not at all clouded over.

Chicken, should be produced in your state.  The c**p that Tyson chicken produces is filled with chemicals.  The skin of the birds should be a clean pinkish white.  If they are yellow tinged, or have signs of bruising, pass them by.

Beef, should be bright red, and will have a very slight smell of iron if you have a sensative nose.  Do NOT buy packages where the meat is sitting in a plastic tray, and the top of the plastic wrap appears to bubble up slightly.  These have been filled with carbon monoxide gas, to keep the meat appearing fresh and red, well beyond the time when it actually is.  

The very best, is to buy your meat at a local butcher, as I do (for that which we do not produce on our farm).  He cuts the meat to order right in front of me, from cows and pigs they slaughter on site.

Read the dates on the package!  Pass any meat cuts up that have a grey ting to them...they are getting too old.

Some of this is so hard to describe, since my training started as a little girl, sitting in a shopping cart.  That's when my Mom started teaching me to pick out fresh foods.

I rarely shop at grocery stores anymore.  I'm use to being able to SMELL my fresh fruit, berries, and vegtables.  Very little of the grocery store fair has a scent anymore.

Truely fresh, and healthy fruits and vegtables should smell delicious.  Their skin should be firm, and not show signs of wrinkling, which is dehydration.  

The skin of citrus fruit should be supple, and the very best will give a bit of watery oil, if you run your finger firmly over them.  Skin on citrus fruit will begin to harden to protect the moisture within, the longer they have been from the tree.

Banannas, are totally by skin color...green if you want some to eat in the future, uniform bright yellow if you want them to eat now, dark brown, and even slightly soft if you want them to make bannana bread.

You need to know what seasons certain things grow, to know if you are buying fresh or not.  Are you buying peaches in December?  Then they were shipped from another country, and are not fresh.  Peach season in Idaho has been the past 4 weeks, with this being the very last week.

Some things store and keep extremely well.  The only thing you are making sure of for those items are no bug infestations. Whole wheat (not the flour, I'm talking grain) is one of those things.  Specifically Hard Red Wheat.  The wheat we are usuing is probably 20 years old.  It is fine, and filled with nutritional value.

However if you purchased whole wheat flour in the store, you threw your money away.  Whole wheat flour looses it's food value in 30 days.  In fact the majority of it is gone in 3 days after grinding.  Because of that, you have to grind your own wheat grains, if you want to bake with whole wheat flour.

I usually grind wheat and bake every other day.  

Bread at the grocery store is totally different that good bread.  The sliced bread in grocery stores is supose to be soft.  Good home baked bread should have a nice "thump" to the crust, when flicked with a finger.  It should smell heavenly.

Cheese...for that you just have to know about the cheese you are buying.  Some cheese stinks to high heaven, and that means it's a peak perfection!  Some cheese has veins of mold, and it's supose to!  Some is soft, some is hard....cheese would take far too long to type out all the things to look for.

Milk...if you buy in the grocery store, the only thing you can do is look at the dates on the cartons or jugs.  Truely fresh milk strait from a cow, or goat will be frothy.  It will smell warm and rich, until it is cooled.  As it cools, the cow milk will seperate, and the cream (the fats) will rise to the top.  Goat milk is naturally homogonized, but it too has a slight bit of seperation.

Good milk will appear much thicker and richer than the stuff I'm sure you are use to drinking.

Apple Cider....it should be brown in color, and the smell!  The clean smell of apples should be VERY powerful.  

Well, I need to go tend animals...what I've posted is of some help to you.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 3

To make smart buys of fresh foods you've left the most important sense, common sense.  The best way to buy fresh food is to know where to shop for it and know the seller if you possibly can.  For some foods, like eggs, there is not much you can use your five senses on.  To get fresh eggs, buy them from a local farmer, or from a farmers market.  You will get fresher and better tasting eggs than from the supermarket.  For fish, use your nose, it's the best way to detect fish that is not fresh,  The color of the gills, as you mentioned, is a good indication as well.   Look at a fish's eyes, if they are sunken in and dried up, it's not to fresh.  Fresh meat, smell and color, is the best indication of freshness. Supermarkets can take both of these senses away from you.  They can package it in plastic wrap and use something to make it keep it's red color. Once again the best way to get fresh meat is from a local butcher that you know that you can trust.  Fruits and vegetables, buy local for freshness.  You can feel the  fruit and vegetables in the supermarkets for softness and use your senses to help you buy the best that they have available, but most will have been picked green and ripened with chemicals to look nice for you.  Always buy local for the best gauge of freshness.

Answer 4

pick it or catch it yourself and dang why didnt she wright a book