Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It is always better to eat fresh vegetables grown and sold locally. For many people the dehydrated versions make great emergency food in areas where electrical power can fail regularly or is non-existent as on many Indian reservations. But they also are better than canned food nutritionally (tell that to food banks). They are easier to store, weighing less. But most brands are truly expensive, making them less desirable. Usually canning factories get the best of the harvest, for some unknown reason, since all canned food tend to be cooked to more or less a degree during the canning process, degrading vitamins A, C and E. But, though dehydrated foods are often of poorer quality, they are not subject to too much heat during the process. So they hold more nutrients than canned food. They also weigh less because of the loss of the water. Many are pretty much the same as fresh when rehydrated. This makes them very desirable for long term storage. Amazon used to be the place to go to buy bulk for long-term storage, but their prices have been skyrocketing. This product has maintained the same price all year round for several years, remaining at a truly competitive price in the market for organic dehydrated produce. And being produced by Frontier, it has been kept at high quality. The price actually puts these vegetables into the "bargain" category.. I weighed dry amounts and again after full hydration. Then figured out the percentages of each of the ingredients in a cup of well mixed contents of this product. Then I priced each of the vegetables in the local grocery store. The vegetable mix rehydrates to about 2.97 times the dry weight. This means that if I were to replace this bag of vegetables with only fresh ones, I would spend about $0.12/lb less than this dried mix. That is a bargain when you buy vegetables at summer prices, and considering that dehydration is a cost that will not be covered entirely by that $0.12/lb. There may be less of a difference in price in winter. Because the price of the fresh vegetables rises in winter, these dehydrated versions may cost less than the fresh. You do not have to make a soup with this product, either. Just throw some into water to rehydrate, cook them with other vegetables and/or animal product for a one-pot casserole, taco or sandwich filling, or make them into a sauce to pour over pasta or rice. It is difficult to get tired of this product because of the diversity of vegetables in it. Because the bag is not resealable, I usually pour the contents into a glass jar. Since large glass jars are getting to be very scarce, it is easier to keep them in the mylar bag and reseal with a Euro-seal-like instrument. Plastic containers are never fully resealable because plastic "breathes." They should be a last resort only. Thus, the way this product is packaged puts them ahead of the line of other dehydrated vegetable brands.