Re-freezing vegetables and bread

Dan133269

Is it ok to re-freeze veg and bread that has been defrosted? Wouldn't chance it with meat but how about these?

rubadub

Repeated freezing and thawing will cause water to expand and explode cells in some foods, this changes the texture. You can freeze and thaw foods (including meat) as many times as you want, as long as you do it properly (like defrost meat in the fridge) -no magical contamination occurs as many myths would suggest.

Many manufacturers will warn not to refreeze since they do not want you tasting odd textured foods and blaming their product.

Foods like mushrooms will turn to mush after defrosting, if done at home, fruit will also go mushy, but is fine for smoothies, it also can replace ice cubes as your method of cooling them. If your veg is going into soups or stews it should be fine.

El_Dangeroso

I always though you weren't supposed to refreeze anything! When frozen bacteria develop spores that lie dormant until thawed they are re-activated when thawed so when you freeze them again they continue to grow in the freezer. At least that's my fuzzy memory from leaving cert home economics.

Actually turns out that it's a bit more complicated than that:

http://www.ochef.com/1243.htm

Having suffered food poisoning when I was younger I'm in no rush to take chances though, but that's me.