Freezer Aisle Mistakes You Need To Stop Making

We hate to sound like your parents, but close the darn door if you're not taking something out of the freezer. You might not be responsible for the store's utility bills, but you're still wasting power by making the freezer's motor run more to accommodate the sudden influx of warm air (via Good Housekeeping). You're also creating additional thaw-freeze cycles for the food right at the front of the shelves.

You might not think this is such a big deal in stores, given that the ambient temperature can already feel kind of chilly, and because so many stores have refrigerated sections that are not enclosed. But, an open refrigeration case is not the same as a freezer case with an open door. Doorless vertical storage cases utilize air curtains, which are blasts of cold air that form a barrier between the cooled items and warmer store air (via University of Washington), and they're usually used in refrigerated units, not freezers. Cases with doors don't have that same barrier that stops warm air intrusion when the door is open; the door is the barrier. If you keep it open, you waste energy and risk thawing the food.

If you're going to buy anything from the freezer aisle, buy frozen fruits and vegetables. Stop passing these bags of goodness and pick up a few instead. This way, you'll always have some broccoli or corn on hand, along with mixes that will save you precious time when you want stir fry, but don't want to clean and chop up four different vegetables. The convenience and affordability of frozen produce can't be understated, and there are a few key reasons why.

Frozen produce is often more nutritious than fresh produce. Healthline says produce meant for the freezer is cleaned, cut, and frozen usually within a few hours of being picked, whereas fresh produce can sit in storage or on the shelf for days before you buy it — let alone eat it. That fast preparation and freezing preserves the nutrients in the frozen produce, while the fresh produce has no such safeguard against nutrient loss. Consumer Reports found that, after testing 369 samples of frozen fruits and vegetables, none of them contained dangerous bacteria. That's not to say that frozen produce can't contain bacteria; in fact, there have been outbreaks of foodborne illness stemming from frozen produce. Consumer Reports says it did not test for viruses, but, their testing did find that frozen produce carries little risk of bacterial contamination.

Eating fresh, in-season foods is a nice goal, but doing so to the point where you never go into the freezer aisle at all is another mistake. Frozen meals used to have a terrible reputation as something eaten only by dieters or families who'd rather sit in front of the TV than talk to each other. This reputation is undeserved, especially now, when so many brands are providing everything from superfoods to frozen meals full of protein and vitamins — they've realized that giving consumers the ability to store and eat these foods at their convenience is a boost for business (via The State Journal-Register). 

Combine that availability with other frozen goods, like fruits and vegetables, and you can have a recipe for a diverse diet that doesn't require much time spent cooking. All that being said, you do still have to keep an eye out for problematic frozen food. Frozen meals that are too high in sodium are still common, says Healthfully, and the New York Post warns about ultra-processed foods and those with excessive calorie counts.

When you grab a frozen product off a freezer shelf, you might find traces of ice on it. If you find a lot of ice on it, though, put it back. Those ice crystals are a sign the product partially defrosted and then re-froze, says Today, and there's no way to know for how long the product was sitting in warmer temperatures. If the product contains food that should be loose, like frozen vegetables, put back any where the food inside the packaging has become a solid block and you can't easily break the pieces apart.

Even if the food was not stored in warmer temperatures for very long, the slower re-freezing process in a store's freezers can degrade the quality of the food. Most frozen food is quickly frozen by manufacturers, and Penn State Extension says that this rapid freezing creates smaller ice crystals in the product that do less damage to the food. When the food defrosts and then re-freezes in a store freezer, which isn't meant for flash-freezing, the ice crystals that form can rip apart the food's cells. The University of Minnesota Extension says this can lead to softer food, such as tomatoes that become mushy when thawed. This can make food that you intended to eat raw unappetizing, but it shouldn't be a problem if you plan to cook the food anyway.

A huge mistake people make in the freezer aisle actually occurs outside of it: putting frozen items they don't want on random shelves. To the people who do this, we ask you, do you not know how freezing works? It's bad enough when the unwanted frozen items are placed in the wrong freezer compartment, but when you leave them outside the freezer, they melt and ruin nearby products, not to mention becoming ruined themselves. Check out this picture of a box of melted Bomb Pops from Reddit and ask yourself if you'd want to buy that package, or anything that was placed in the trail of dripping syrup that stained the display shelves.

Users on Quora point out that having to go through the store and return misplaced items means the store needs more employees, which in turn raises costs for consumers. But it's not just the cost of hiring more employees that you have to worry about; it's the cost of dealing with the food waste and potential disinfection protocols. One Redditor noted that sometimes people will leave raw chicken on non-freezer and non-refrigerator shelves, and cleaning that up would require ensuring the shelving and adjacent packages are clean enough to safely handle. If you decide you don't want a frozen item, head back to the freezer aisle to return it.

Now that you're heading to the freezer section last, you grab some frozen food and are off to the register to pay. That speed may sound appealing, but it leads to a final mistake: not inspecting the packaging for damage. Some frozen goods, like vegetables in bags meant for microwave steaming, have special vents cut into them (via Quora). However, holes, uneven or large cuts, missing seals, or loose lids are signs that something happened to the packaging. These can occur by accident or be done deliberately. Either way, the product could contain unwanted substances. For example, in this Reddit thread, a user points out that the Lysol the original poster used to clean a ripped package of chicken nuggets could have gotten inside the bag and onto the food. And don't forget the instances of in-store ice-cream licking that have occurred through the years, such as this case in 2020.

Those more extreme examples aside, the packaging could allow anything from dust and bugs to germs inside the bag or container, and you waste food when you have to throw away something that you didn't check before buying. The FDA says that deliberate tampering is rare, but that they have stepped up inspections to address the possibility in food production settings. No need for paranoia, but you should look over each bag or box and notify a store employee if you find something that looks like it's been opened.