Spoiled Rotten: Keeping Fruits and Veggies from Going Bad

No one wants to buy fruits and vegetables only to throw them away days later because they’ve gone bad. Where you store them can lengthen their shelf life, maximizing their taste and texture and stretching your money.

You have three main choices for storage: the pantry, the fridge or the countertop, according to the American Heart Association.

You can store most fruits and veggies in your fridge, except for bananas, tomatoes, potatoes, lemons and limes, says Christina Rollins, a registered dietitian at Memorial Medical Center. Bananas will suffer from freezer damage in the fridge, tomatoes turn mealy and lose their flavor and aroma, the starch in potatoes turns to sugar in the cold, and lemons and limes absorb fridge odors.

The PANTRY is great for:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Shallots
• Hard squash
• Sweet potatoes
• Potatoes
• Yams
• Watermelons

The COUNTERTOP is the place to keep your:

• Bananas
• Citrus fruit
• Stone fruit
• Tomatoes

Store them loose and away from sunlight, heat and moisture. Stone fruit, such as avocados and peaches, should be stored in paper bags to ripen, then moved to the fridge where they’ll last a few more days.

For all the storage tips in one handy source, check out the accompanying infographic from the American Heart Association.