Content

• Steps
• Method 1 of 3: Using Raw Foods
• Method 2 of 3: Cooking food
• Method 3 of 3: Storing and preserving food
• Additional articles

Food provides us with essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that we need to keep our bodies functioning properly and staying healthy. However, many methods of cooking and preserving food can destroy or reduce the amount of vitamins in foods. Learn to process food so that it retains the maximum amount of its vitamins.

Steps

Method 1 of 3: Using Raw Foods

1. 1 Eat fresh food. Most of the nutrients are found in the fruits and vegetables you just harvested. The more you wait before eating them, the more nutrients they lose.
   • Buy only as much as you eat in a few days. It is better to shop more often so that there is always fresh food in the fridge.
   • Shop where the freshest produce is available. In season, you can buy directly from farmers or farmers' markets.
2. 2 Include raw foods in your diet. Cooking vegetables lowers their vitamin C content, although they can increase other valuable nutrients such as lycopene. Broccoli, watercress, and garlic are generally best consumed raw than cooked. The main thing is moderation and balance.
   • Raw broccoli contains sulforaphane, a potentially protective chemical, while raw carrots contain polyphenols, another group of protective chemicals. Heat treatment of these vegetables destroys these compounds, but replaces them with other beneficial substances, including indole and carotenoids.
3. 3 Open less surface. Air, water and heat - all these factors "attack" vitamins, and the more the surface of the product is exposed, the stronger their effect. Vegetables that are cut into large chunks will retain more nutrients during cooking than chopped vegetables. If you need smaller pieces, you can always grind the cooked vegetable before serving.
4. 4 Choose sun-ripened fruits. Try not to buy fruits that have been plucked green.For example, tomatoes grown on bush outdoors can contain twice as much vitamin C as greenhouse tomatoes.
5. 5 Wash food quickly. If you soak food for a long time, water-soluble vitamins and minerals may be leached out of the food.

Method 2 of 3: Cooking food

1. 1 Learn which foods are most nutritious when cooked and how to cook them. If a food contains a lot of nutrients and vitamins, but your body is unable to absorb or process them, these useful substances are mostly wasted. Cooking often increases the absorption of certain substances. For example, as it turned out, the absorption of beta-carotene is increased by 6.5 times if the carrots are quickly fried in hot oil, rather than consumed raw. Sauteing tomatoes in olive oil can help absorb the antioxidant lycopene better.
   • Spinach, asparagus, and mushrooms can also benefit from heat treatment as it increases the bioavailability of certain nutrients they contain, allowing the body to absorb them better.
   • Try cooking vegetables whole and with the skins to preserve vitamins.
   • Surprisingly, using the microwave is a great way to cook or reheat food while preserving nutrients, especially in mushrooms and garlic. This is due to the short cooking times.
2. 2 Choose your cooking utensils wisely. Iron pots can destroy vitamin C, but add iron, especially to acidic foods, while bare copper will destroy vitamin C, vitamin E, and folic acid.
3. 3 Don't cook for too long! Too long frying meat destroys thiamine.
4. 4 Steam whenever possible. Boiling vegetables or cooking them in high amounts of fat (such as deep-fried) can deprive them of valuable vitamins. Water-soluble vitamins such as B and C will be washed out in the boil, while fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A will go into vegetable oil when fried. It is best to steam vegetables using a small amount of water, on the stove top or in the microwave. You can also sauté vegetables in a small amount of fat, which will become part of the dish itself.
   • If you are using microwave safe containers, microwave cooking affects nutrient content no more than any other cooking method.
   • Place a lid on the dishes. If you cover the pot with a lid when cooking vegetables, steam will build up inside, which will cook the vegetables faster.
5. 5 Add a little oil to the vegetables. Drizzle some olive oil into a salad or lightly sauté green vegetables in oil. This will help you absorb the fat-soluble vitamins found in vegetables.
6. 6 Reuse or save the water you cooked in. Any water used in cooking absorbs vitamins that are washed out of the food, as well as part of their taste. Choose cooking methods that will allow you to conserve this water. For example, cook vegetables in soup. Or, use the leftover water from steaming as a stock base for the next pot of soup.

Method 3 of 3: Storing and preserving food

1. 1 Store fruits and vegetables in a cool place. Enzymatic processes that destroy vitamins will slow down if vegetables and fruits are stored at temperatures close to freezing.
2. 2 Store milk in a cool and dark place. Riboflavin and vitamins A and D can be degraded by direct sunlight.
3. 3 Freeze food. Freezing preserves nutrients better than any other method of preserving food, such as drying, marinating, or preserving.
   • Blanch the vegetables first by immersing them in boiling water for a short time to prevent enzymatic changes that destroy vitamins and to kill the microorganisms living on their surface.
   • Add some ascorbic acid to your fruit to control enzymes that cause vitamin breakdown and discoloration.
   • If vegetables or fruits are frozen immediately after harvest, they will have more vitamins than standing fresh food in stores.
4. 4 Dehydrate foods. Although drying food in the sun or in the oven loses more vitamins than freezing, it is still less destructive than canning. Freeze dehydration followed by freeze-drying is a method often used for herbs and soups and retains even more nutritional value.
5. 5 Eat canned foods in moderation. Canning destroys many water-soluble vitamins. However, it allows vegetables and meats to be kept at room temperature with a minimum of chemical preservatives. In addition, some canned foods retain vitamins. Canned fish, for example, are high in calcium, and canned fatty fish retain their levels of omega-3 fatty acids.

Additional articles

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