Loss of relevant nutritional compounds during shipping

@david.n.forster @jill @mawada

So… deciding on how quickly we need to get samples back the lab for the Real Food Campaign. There are 2 options:

3 day shipping ($13.95 for 6 samples)
2 day AM shipping ($28 for 6 samples)

The question is that for antioxidents, polyphenols, proteins, and minerals, are we going to see significant and nonuniform changes in those values due to 3 versus 2 day shipping times? We’ve considered having folks include a cold pack, which will definitely make a difference, but that is to me unrealistic given the scale of people involved and the process they’ll be going through to collect samples.

Based on this link (http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-779.pdf) it feels like both 2 or 3 days are relatively short (in comparison to the times they were testing) and the difference of a day is likely to be minimal.

However, I’d love to get opinions or get alternative references.