Contrary to long-held culinary wisdom, cook your veggies
Our Italian friends (who most assuredly know good cooking as evidenced by their contributions to the Mediterranean diet) have provided new research data showing that cooking vegetables can not only retain all of those precious nutrients, but in some cases, may actually boost them! And that's even when compared to eating them raw.
Everything depends on the how you cook it, which drove the focus of this research.
For the purposes of this study, the researchers took three common Italian cooking methods: boiling, steaming and frying. Next, they chose three vegetables commonly used in Italian cooking: broccoli, carrots and zucchini. They proceeded to boil, steam and fry those three vegetables and then measure the effect of the cooking method on the nutritional content.
Here's what they found:
Boiling: antioxidant levels were maintained
Steaming: the antioxidant levels were also maintained
Frying: there was a significant loss of antioxidants found in comparison to the other two methods.
Specifically for broccoli, it was found that steaming those green clusters can actually boost their level of glucosinolates. That's a good thing to boost, because it's these very compounds that are beneficial in fighting off cancer.
This should be appetizing news to anyone concerned over the loss of nutrients and health benefits from cooked vegetables. I firmly believe in including both cooked and raw vegetables in one's diet. The overall health benefits of just including enough fresh vegetables—preferably organic and preferably from local sources (ideally, your own garden!)—cooked or raw, are so dramatic that I think we can sometimes get carried away arguing which is more important. While there are, without argument, merits to eating vegetables in their natural, original state, you can't help but think about how good a hot dish tastes on a cold winter night.
