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If you boil vegetables, you lose nutrients but what about


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If you boil vegetables, you lose nutrients but what about roasting them in the oven. So say instead of boilining broccoli, cook it in the oven. Would you keep more of the nutrients in tact that way, or would the heat still suck the nutrients out?

 

So my question is how does boiling broccoli compare to roasting it in the oven, nutrition wise.???

 

(and please dont tell me to eat it raw!).

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cg.

 

my 2 cents.

 

There is a unique art to cooking Indian cuisine. Indian civilization are said to be the only & longest surviving till today. Second to that was the egyptian civilization.

 

Indian traditions are based on Vedas and Upanishads which are said to be the number one source of knowledge in the world. The oldest, the wisest.. they are said to have mapped & documented stuff, the earth, its size, and number of other before anyone else.

 

Hehe .. a little off topic.

 

But, essentially I think cooking has certain benefits in terms of killing pathogens etc (In india its recommeded to boil water as a means of killing bacteria etc).

 

RAW is good. But everything raw may not be ideal. We learnt over time that certain things could be better processed by our systems in certain ways.

 

My mom used to never throw away water or gravy that veggies were cooked in. It absorbs. In terms of nutrients.. there is not elimination but possibly more of a transformation. (Overcooked in oil.. is bad) but light cooking or boiling veggies is not that bad.

 

Ofcourse, balancing the raw (salads.. washed) and the cooked is important.

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Dang, that sucks about loosing some nutrients but I guess you'll be okay if you combine cooked and raw food. What about the microwave, i've heard that you loose nutrients but I'm not sure how much. Anyone know about that?

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The most important thing to consider about cooking is the loss of the enzymes that help digest and break up the food in the first place!

 

Eating raw and cooked makes no difference as everything is used up trying to process the cooked stuff.

 

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Roasting is worse, then baking would be next -- acrylamides form, especially with starches. The absolute worse for acrylamides would be to barbecue, though)

 

Steaming as lightly as possible is best if you are going to cook food.

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Okay, I'm going to put this point first:

 

Just been thinking about cooked food vs raw food:

 

We often talk about the economic and natural waste caused by the meat industry and the dairy industry etc..

 

I wonder how much energy and money we would save if the western world ceased to use ovens, electric hobs and gas stoves.

 

I bet just after a few days we would have saved enough energy and money to fund decent sanitation and clean water systems in the third world.

 

What are your thoughts on this?

 

As for our choices in the western world, where we have access to anything we want, when we want, how we want:

 

Steaming vegetables is supposed to be better than boiling.

 

Looking at the raw food argument from a biological, rather than macroenomic point of view: can the body actually ustilise raw broccoli, for example? I can't imagine eating it raw.

 

Another point: beans, peas and chickpeas are classed as fruit, right? We call them pulses, I know, but in German the word for pulses is "Hülsenfrüchte" and I seem to remember the 5-a-day campaign listing beans as a fruit. Anyway, I'm pretty sure these foods have to be cooked before we can digest them.

 

So my point is: is cooking really such a bad thing from a biological/physiological point of view? Or would raw foodists/fruitarians argue that anything that cannot be eaten in its natural state should not be consumed?

 

I believe cranberries also have to be cooked before they can be eaten by humans.

 

I can see where the raw foodists/fruitarians are coming from, and as I mentioned above, we would certainly save energy by just eating raw. At the moment I would say about 50% of my diet is made up of raw, unprocessed food...

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Roasting is worse, then baking would be next -- acrylamides form, especially with starches. The absolute worse for acrylamides would be to barbecue, though)

 

Steaming as lightly as possible is best if you are going to cook food.

what she said.

 

i'd guess that stir frying to the point of heating and retaining crispy-ness is better, too.

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I also have heard that light steaming is the best. I do steam and stir fry some things, but I am sure to eat alot of raw too. I guess it must be tough for someone who has a hard time handling the raw foods(stomach problems).

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