Negative associations of frozen compared with fresh vegetables

Despite the convenience and nutritional advantages of frozen vegetables, compared with fresh vegetables, the consumption of frozen vegetables is very low and continues to decline. In two studies, we observed that frozen vegetables have a negative bias compared to fresh vegetables.

In Study 1, we used the implicit association test (IAT) to prove that the general negative associations with frozen vegetables are automatic, powerful, and ingrained in long-term memory.

In Study 2, we conceptually replicated this finding with a clear measurement method and expanded it by studying the role of food transformation in the formation of the observed negative biases. We found that when participants considered the final cooked product, the evaluation of frozen spinach did not improve.

On the contrary, when the participants considered the final cooked product, we saw that the evaluation of fresh spinach was not so favorable. These findings are consistent with previous studies that show that changing food from its "natural" state to its "natural" state will lead to poorer evaluations of it.

In this case, once fresh vegetables become ripe, they may become as unpopular as frozen vegetables. Finally, the number of possible conversions is important. In this case, compared with fresh vegetables, frozen vegetables are less popular because the food undergoes two transformations (that is, from fresh to frozen, and then from frozen to cooked), while fresh vegetables are Transform only once (that is, from fresh to cooked).

The purpose of this study was to determine if individuals have an automatic preference for fresh (vs. frozen) vegetables. We do so using an IAT to explore the positive and negative associations for fresh and frozen vegetables.

While we conceptually replicated our results across two different populations (one from the northeastern United States and the other from the southeastern United States), it is important to note that our samples are drawn from university subject pools and are limited in their generalizability. Indeed, we believe it is possible that our results actually understate the scope of the problem at hand, as nutrition literacy might be significantly higher among our participant populations of university students than it is among the general public and, importantly, lower income households.