Consuming cooking food enables us to enjoy it, some prefer it cooked, others fried or roasted. But food processing itself reduces its nutritional value. Preparation and cooking help us digest food easier and use its ingredients.
For example, boiled egg protein is 180% better for our digestive system than live egg protein. In some other examples, it occurs in reverse, with high-temperature processing of many the nutrients are lost, and we never know it, and we think our meal was perfectly cooked, with a good smell and taste, but with no nutritional value.
In today’s text, we will focus on this issue, how food preparation affects its nutritional composition, and its use by humans.
How vitamins and minerals respond to processing
Of the vitamins most sensitive are Vitamin C and B vitamins, they are very sensitive to heat treatment.
There are other vitamins such as A, K, D, and E which are also sensitive in cooking but do not lose much of their content, and minerals are susceptible to loss of their nutritional value, most sensitive in this respect are potassium, followed by calcium, magnesium, and sodium.
Cooking food
Most fruits and vegetables are a great source of vitamin C, which degrades when we cook them at high temperatures in water. In fact, digesting most of the vitamins or vitamin C is lost.
Digestion of spinach and broccoli can lose up to 50% of their vitamin C content. Also, B vitamins are very sensitive, and they are greatly degraded.
How do grill roasting and high-temperature processing affect food?
We all look forward to going somewhere to a restaurant or making a delicious home-made barbecue.
But this way of cooking and food processing has its downsides. Even 40% of the minerals and B vitamins are lost in this way of cooking.
It is becoming increasingly common to think that baking grilled food causes the creation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are a
potential hazard for the production of carcinogenic substances when grilling meat.
Cooking in the microwave
Using a microwave oven is an easy and quick way of preparing food. The fast-food preparation time helps to preserve most of the nutritional value.
There are some concerns that such fast-food preparation may cause radiation release to the food, but so far these claims have no scientific basis and have not been proven.
The only downside to microwave cooking is to be careful not to use a plastic container.
Because plastic can easily be affected by the waves emitted by it. The microwave can cause the release of toxic substances into the food.
Therefore, always use glassware. Several studies have shown that cooking in a microwave largely retains the antioxidant properties of vegetables, especially for vegetables and mushrooms.
What about the vitamins they cook by losing 20 to 30 percent, but that’s less than cooking in other ways.
Bake in the oven with a small amount of oil
This way of cooking food is quite positive. Because when we roast vegetables without water and add a little oil, some of the B vitamins are lost, but in turn. the oil improves the absorption of certain food ingredients like such as antioxidants and some vitamins.
For example carrot absorption, more precisely the beta carotene it contains is 6.5 times higher when baking in an oven than fresh carrot.
In one study the results showed that blood levels of lycopene increased by 80% in those who consumed thermal tomato sauce with
oil, compared to fresh tomato sauce or sauce cooked without oil.
However, vitamin C levels unfortunately also decrease with this way of preparing food.
Consuming fried food
This way of cooking means frying. Food in large quantities of oil. Food roasting is the most common method of cooking because this kind of food preparation is more tasteful compared to digestion and roasting.
For an excellent taste of food has the oil, which is nowadays available in different variants.
Although not every food is intended to be cooked in this way, which we will explain with a few examples.
For example, omega 3 fatty acids are one of the most important when it comes to the benefits of our health nutrients.
But cooking in oil degrades these fatty acids. If we take the tuna, for example, it loses 85 percent of its omega 3 fatty acids, while roasting in the oven is insignificant. On the other hand, vitamins are more preserved if cooked in oil.
Roasting in oil should be remembered that it is not recommended to use the same oil over and over again
toxic substances called aldehydes, which indicate the possibility of cancer.
The type of frying oil has a great influence on the possible percentage of aldehyde formation and the time of frying with the appropriate oil.
By frying in oil there is a danger of forming trans fats. they are often associated with the occurrence of various cardiovascular problems.
Specifically, the use of refined polyunsaturated oils is those that are easily trans fat.
Steam cooking
The best way to preserve the nutritional value of food is of course steaming.
For example, cooking broccoli and spinach loses 9 to 15 percent of vitamin C, which is very little compared to cooking in other ways.
Extra 5 ways to preserve the nutritional content of your food when cooking
1. Use water but look for a smaller amount, thereby reducing the rate of degradation of nutrients.
2. If you are cooking a soup or something, for example, consume the liquid to make the most of its ingredients.
3. When consuming vegetables, use not peeled vegetables before cooking, thus successfully retaining the highest percentage of its value.
4. Always cut vegetables after cooking.
5. When cooking vegetables, be sure to use them as soon as possible,
ie the less time you cook and process heat, the more you will benefit from the nutrients.
Summary
In today’s article, we have covered a topic that does concern us all, because we do have to eat to live.
We have learned a lot about food preparation. How to make the best use of your nutritional values.
Choose the one that suits you best and try to consume healthy food, as it is one of the key factors in a better and healthier life.
