Meal Prep: How To Store Prepped Food - Mind Over Munch Kickstart 2016

Hi guys! It is our last Meal Prep Mondays of the Kickstart series but fret not if you want more meal prep videos let me know you like them by giving these videos a thumbs up and I will keep them coming. Today I thought I'd touch on a topic that I get asked about all the time in the comments and that is how to store prepped food. So I talk a lot about this in my meal prep e-book. If you haven't already gotten your copy, get it! It is a beginner's guide and it's gonna break down how to efficiently prep for your lifestyle and if you use the code Kickstart you will get the e-book or any package of your choice 10% off for the next 24 hours only. So how to store food? The first thing to consider is how many days worth of food you have to store. I have a whole chart in the e-book that breaks it down but I pretty much prep for four to five days at a time. There are some things like fish that when cooked are only good for a few days so if I prep fish for the week I might refrigerate two to three days worth and then freeze the rest. So feel free to reference that chart for specifics on other items. In general let's talk about how to store food in the fridge and keep it as fresh as possible. Now obviously once cut the time it stays fresh will diminish so if you can wait to cut it great but then it wouldn't be meal prep and the way I see it if I don't do it in advance I probably won't do it at all so for me it's best to just do it in advance. For fruits and veggies if they dry out more quickly I store them in an unsealed bag with a little splash of water in there to keep it moist. Greens are stored best in bags that are sealed with a little bit of air. It's a good idea to store cut fruits and vegetables in glass containers lined with paper towels which can keep the moisture out. I will put a PDF in the description that I found online which has a great guide to how to store specific fruits and vegetables. For cooked meals I store them in the fridge within two hours of cooking. You don't really need to wait long to store them. There's a lot of talk flying around about hot food and bacteria if it's stored too quickly but most studies have sort of debunked that and said that actually the quicker you can get into the fridge the longer it's gonna be fresh which sort of makes sense to me because bacteria grow less in the cold. If you don't feel comfortable or have a thing about it then that's fine you can wait until it's cooled it's up to you. The top shelf of your fridge is the warmest so yogurt and cheese and other prepared items should go up there and then below that can go your cooked meat. This is why the crisper drawers for produce are usually at the bottom. They're colder. That's also a good place to put your raw meat if you're gonna cook it in the next few days. The door racks are the best for eggs and condiments and juices because the temperature fluctuates when the door is opened and closed and these items won't be as affected by the change. Try not to stuff your refrigerator too full so the air can still circulate and keep the food a safe temperature. Another question, does food lose nutritional quality when it's cut? Maybe but studies show that if the nutritional quality is lost it's very little and the truth is as I mentioned earlier if I don't want to cut it in advance I won't do it all. So am I better getting in no nutritional quality because I just don't have the time to cook every night or am I better getting in the veggies anyway with just slightly less nutritional quality because I cut them in advance and set myself up for success. The choice is yours. So those are my basic food storage tips and again they are directly from my meal prep ebook which is available at mindovermunch.com slash ebooks. Do you have any specific types of meal prep you'd like to see? Last week I shared a vegan meal prep and we've done many clean and basic preps so comment below and let me know what you want to see and I will bring that to you. If you do any meal prep be sure to tag me on social and use the tag And remember it's all a matter of Mind Over Munch.