Nine vegetables that are healthier for you when cooked
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Loading... - Ali Mohamed
- 29 Jul 2022
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Raw food diets are a fairly recent trend, including raw veganism. The belief being that the less processed food is, the better. However, not all food is more nutritious when eaten raw. Indeed, some vegetables are actually more nutritious when cooked. Here are nine of them.
1. Asparagus
All living things are made up of cells, and in vegetables, important nutrients are sometimes trapped within these cell walls. When vegetables are cooked, the walls break down, releasing the nutrients that can then be absorbed more easily by the body. Cooking asparagus breaks down its cell walls, making vitamins A, B9, C and E more available to be absorbed.
2. Mushrooms
Mushrooms contain large amounts of the antioxidant ergothioneine, which is released during cooking. Antioxidants help break down “free radicals”, chemicals that can damage our cells, causing illness and ageing.
3. Spinach
Spinach is rich in nutrients, including iron, magnesium, calcium and zinc. However, these nutrients are more readily absorbed when the spinach is cooked. This is because spinach is packed with oxalic acid (a compound found in many plants) that blocks the absorption of iron and calcium. Heating spinach releases the bound calcium, making it more available for the body to absorb.
Research suggests that steaming spinach maintains its levels of folate (B9), which may reduce the risk of certain cancers.
4. Tomatoes
Cooking, using any method, greatly increases the antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes. Lycopene has been associated with a lower risk of a range of chronic diseases including heart disease and cancer. This increased lycopene amount comes from the heat that helps to break down the thick cell walls, which contain several important nutrients.
Although cooking tomatoes reduces their vitamin C content by 29%, their lycopene content increased by more than 50% within 30 minutes of cooking. Read More…
