How Cooking Food Changes Nutritional Values

It may seem as if it can’t possibly be true, yet understanding how cooking food changes nutritional values is so important. We may start out with good intentions, deciding that we want to eat right and change our health with the right foods. This is all a good thing, but in the end we do need to consider that the way we eat these foods matters, too. It’s more than just going out and buying the right foods; a healthy diet is also a matter of how we prepare and cook them. If you’re overcooking your foods or not enjoying them in the right way, you may actually be creating the wrong effect for your health. Therefore, it’s important to understand why the right preparation and cooking method can really go a long way.

If you look at the way that cooking food changes nutritional values, understand that it’s mostly a matter of how much you cook them. For instance, a food such as broccoli starts out as one of the true superfoods. It has so many nutrients and benefits for your health; therefore, many of us try to make it a regular part of our eating plan. If you gently cook it or eat it in its rawest form, then you are taking in all of those nutrients and truly enjoying all that it has to offer. If, however, you overcook it—that is to say, you cook it for too long or heat it to far too high of a temperature—then you are going to cook those nutritional values right out of this otherwise healthy food.

Keep It Simple and Slow for Best Values

The thing to remember as far as how cooking food changes nutritional values is that a little cooking can go a long way. A gentle sauté or steam is great, but you want to keep it short and sweet. If you cook it for too long, or if you use too much heat, then the nutritional values tend to shrink as the time goes on. So what may have started as a supremely healthy food has dwindled down and is no longer as good for you. If you just cook it gently or even eat it raw, then you get everything the food has to offer. Keeping it simple and slow when you cook ensures that you eat the right foods the way they were meant to be enjoyed.

If you are worried about how cooking food changes nutritional values, then, simply remember that it all boils down to keeping food close to its natural form. After all, you wouldn’t want to fry your foods or cook them in a ton of butter. Focus on lower temperatures and gentle cooking to keep those nutritional values high and intact. If you want to reward yourself and protect your health with truly nutritious foods, then this is an important way to look at your cooking. If you start slow and keep it simple, then you still get all the right things out of your diet.