We must conserve vitamins present in the vegetables and fruits so that we get sufficient nutrients from them while consuming them.
Food renders vital vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients needed by the body to function and live healthily. Many cooking and processing foods can destroy or reduce their vitamin content.
However, cooking foods can also make them more comfortable to digest and may enhance the retention of certain nutrients.
Try consuming a mix of cooked and raw foods, and determine how to prepare the food you eat in ways that maintain their vitamins.
Cooking Foods
Identify which foods are most nutritious when cooked and how to cook them. If a food comprises many nutrients and vitamins, but your body cannot absorb or prepare them, the nutrients are typically wasted. Conversely, cooking can often improve the absorption of specific nutrients. For instance, the beta-carotene consumption was 6.5 times more excellent when carrots were stir-fried as against when consumed raw. Furthermore, tomatoes sautéed in olive oil may be associated with increased intake of lycopene, an antioxidant.
Asparagus, spinach, and mushrooms are other foods that may serve from heating, as this can enhance the bioavailability of specific nutrients, enabling your body to assimilate them better.
Cook foods whole and unpeeled to maintain their vitamins while preparing.
It may amaze you to discover that microwaving is an attractive way to heat food while conserving various nutrients, especially mushrooms and garlic. It is due to the brief cooking times.
Pick cooking pots carefully. Iron pots may damage vitamin C but add iron, particularly in acidic food, while unlined copper will damage vitamin E, folacin, and vitamin C.
Never overcook. Roasting meat for a lengthy duration destroys thiamin.
Steam when possible. If you blanch vegetables or cook them in large amounts of fat (for example, through deep-frying), you may finish up draining out valuable vitamins. For illustration, water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin B and vitamin C will be drained out during boiling. In contrast, fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A will drain out into cooking oil. So instead, steam vegetables using a small quantity of water on the stovetop or in a microwave. You can also sauté them in a bit of amount of fat involved in the dish itself.
As long as you apply microwave-safe vessels, microwaving does not influence nutrient content more than any other cooking process.
Put the lid on. By putting the lid-top on your pot while cooking vegetables, steam is generated to cook the vegetables quickly.
Put some oil on your vegetables. Sprinkling some olive oil on your slaw or lightly frying your veggies in fat can assist you in assimilating the fat-soluble vitamins held in vegetables.
Reuse or conserve cooking water. Any water used while cooking catches the vitamins that leach out of the food and its character. Prefer to cook with methods that enable you to preserve this water. For example, cook vegetables in a soup. Or, utilize the residual water from steaming as the stock for your next lot of soup.
Preparing Raw Foods
Consume fresh foods. Nutrients are most abundant in fruits and vegetables that have just been chosen. The higher you wait to consume your food, the more nutrient damage will have happened.
Only get as much as you will handle in a few days. After that, it is more beneficial to buy more often and have fresher food choices.
Buy at markets that allow the preserved food. In season, you may be ready to purchase directly from producers or at farmers’ markets.
Include raw food in your diet. Cooking vegetables can decrease vitamin C, though increasing other relevant nutrients, such as lycopene. Broccoli, watercress, and garlic are all usually better raw than cooked. But, again, regulation and stability are the keys.
Raw broccoli includes sulforaphane, a potentially protective compound, and raw carrots contain polyphenols, another defensive group of compounds. Preparing these vegetables kills these compounds but substitutes them with other substances, including indole and carotenoid.
Decrease surface exposure. Environment and heat all attack vitamins springing at the surface of the produce. Vegetables cut into big pieces will retain more nutrients in food than small pieces. If you require smaller, bite-size pieces, you can perpetually cut them smaller in size before serving.
Pick fruits ripened in the sun. Evade fruits that were chosen green. For example, tomatoes ripened outside on the vine can have twice as much vitamin C as greenhouse tomatoes.
Wash produce quickly. If you soak make, you may leach out water-soluble vitamins and minerals.
Storing and Preserving Foods
Stock fruits and vegetables in a cool and dry place. The enzymatic processes that damage vitamins will be reduced by holding vegetables and fruits near-freezing temperatures.
Store milk cool and out of solid light. Riboflavin, vitamin A, and vitamin D can be ruined by direct sunlight.
Freeze eatables. Freezing preserves nutrients better than other methods of preservation, like pickling, drying, or canning.
Blanch vegetables first by immersing them in boiling water to stop the enzymatic modifications that kill vitamins and micro-organisms living on the exterior.
Supplement ascorbic acid to fruits to regulate enzymes that create degeneration of vitamins as well as appearances.
If vegetables or fruits were frozen immediately after harvest, they might have more vitamins than older fresh produce at a grocery store.
Dehydrate foods. While dehydrating foods in the sun or ovens cause more vitamin damage than freezing, it is less damaging than canning. Freeze-drying, which is a process often used for herbs and soups, saves even more nutritional content.
Eat canned foods sparingly. Canning removes many water-soluble vitamins. However, it caters to the storage of vegetables and meats at room temperature with minimum chemical preservatives. In addition, some canned foods preserve vitamins. Canned fish, for instance, has raised levels of calcium, and canned oily fish checks its levels of omega-3 fatty acids.