What's the best way to prepare our produce? Raw, baked, boiled, pressure cooked, fried, microwaved or George Forman'd?!
Now that we have all this great produce, many ask what's the healthiest way to prepare it? Is raw or cooked better? If I decide to cook it, which method is the best? How much does it really matter? Taste aside, the answer to these questions may depend on the type of food, and what nutritional quality is important to you. There are many ways to look at the nutritional value of food including calories (energy), vitamin and mineral content, and phytonutrient content. Another interesting way to break it down is anti-oxidant capacity of the food. This is not the content of the food, but the action of the food against harmful oxidation (think rust, but in your body). This video discusses the findings of researchers who analyzed the anti-oxidant capacity of twenty vegetables raw or prepared 6 different ways: boiled, fried, pressure cooked, griddled (george forman'd) baked or microwaved. The findings may surprise many of you. Researchers found that boiling and pressure cooking were the worst because the water leached nutrients from the vegetables, but not as much as you might think, only 14% on average. Check out this video to see the winners in this study, and to find out which foods were better raw, and which were better cooked!
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