How to cook food to extract the most nutrients
Level your nutritional knowledge and your culinary know-how.
Do you want to pay a third of your bottle of wine even before having a sip?
We did not think it. Well, the same thing is worthfood preparation. Just because you search a dish with a healthy ingredient does not mean that you get all the benefits you can possibly. The way you choose to prepare, make a pair and cook your food influence its amount of nutrients available. For example, when you boil spinach, its levels of vitamin C decrease by 35% compared to the moment you eat it believed. This is because heat and water can destroy some of the vitamins in vegetables, especially vitamin C soluble in water, B vitamins, such as folate and potassium.
On the other hand, some studies really suggest that some foods benefit from a small fire. If this is the case, it is because the heat facilitates the liberation ofantioxidants By breaking the walls of the cell, which facilitates the absorption of these compounds. It's not just about the cooking method that influences nutrition - it can also be the way you treat or cut a food and even what you associate this food with when you eat it.
Before you escape, take your heart in the sense that there is a handful of simple steps that you can borrow in the kitchen to reinforce the health potential of your food - without sacrificing the flavor. Here is a break in the methods you need to know: proven secrets of science that already make good ingredients, even better and more likely to transmit their advantages of their flat belly.
How to cook
Tomatoes: crush and cooking
Increase the heat on red tomatoes to give these fruits a certain power to fight the disease. That is to say that cooking significantly increases the levels of a beneficial compound called lycopene-a carotenoid responsible for the red color of the tomatoes shown to reduce cancer and perhaps even protect the skin from UV light in cleaning the free radicals of the disease (that's what makes it great food to get youBikini ready) The heat induces a change of structure of lycopene, converting it into a "bioavailable" configuration which is more easily absorbed by our bodies. Another way to free up the absorbable power of lycopene is to treat tomatoes. This process could involve crushing them (as you see in crushed tomatoes, canned) or turn them into tomato paste.
Eating this! Advice:
The more the cooking is long, the better. A clinical trial led by the University of Ohio State showed that people had 55% lycopene in their blood after eating a specially transformed tomato sauce that has undergone a second cooking cycle for 40 minutes than they have done after eating a regular red tomato sauce.
It's the same for: Foods rich in lycopene such as sweet red peppers, asparagus, purple cabbage and carrots
Broccoli: slightly steam and season
If cancer is a complex printed circuit board, broccoli is like the large red shutdown switch. The researchers mainly attribute the anticancer properties mainly to sulforapéhane (SPN), a powerful compound that works on a genetic level to "turn off" the cancer genes. But triggering its release is delicate and too much cooking can damage myrosinase, the essential enzyme to the formation of this powerful antioxidant. Fortunately, researchers have understood exactly how to maximize the power to combat broccoli cancer. This involves heating sufficient flowers to eliminate a sulfur catch protein that disables vegetable cancer control properties, but not enough to kill the enzyme that helps produce the powerful anticurinogenic compound.
Eating this! Advice:
According to the study, the best way to prepare broccoli is to spray it lightly on a bathing marie (a fantasy phrase for a hot water bath) about 3 or 4 minutes - until broccoli is hard. If you like your broccoli, but I always want to reap the fight against cancer, other research recommends associating them with mustard.Spicy foodLike mustard, horseradish and Wasabi contain the enzyme (called myrosinase) which shape spn but is destroyed by heat.
It's the same for: Sulforaphane foods like cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, curly cabbage and cabbage
Carrots: Boil
There is nothing better than the sweet and crisp stick of a fresh carrot, but noticing on this vegetable raw orange is not the best way to get your daily dose of vitamins (likefiber) On aInternational Journal for Food ResearchReport, boiling the orange vegetable allows the human body to extract a much larger fraction of its beta-carotene-a carotenoid that the body converts to a vitamin amo-stimulant, protector of vision and vitamin A-glowing carrot '. The heat also helps to release the carotenoids of the protein complex in which they reside in the carrot.
Eating this! Advice:
Cook the carrots until it is mild, boil or to torré. To add a flavor punch to your boiled carrots, drain them and transfer them into a bowl and mix with a drizzle of olive oil and a little pepper and dried rosemary. The addition of the oil allows them to better taste, but also improves the absorption of beta-carotene since it is a volume vitamin. Publish carrots also makes it possible to break the cell walls so that carotenoids are more available for absorption. Carrot soup or carrot cake, anyone?
It's the same for: Beta-carotene foods like sweet potatoes, squash, red peppers, peas and broccoli
Spinach: take your choice
Spinach are a delicate vegetarian. On the one hand, it is full of lycopene, beta-carotene and lutein-all antioxidants found to become much more bioavailable and more easily absorbed by our bodies after the cooking process. It is full of iron, that cooking makes it more available for absorption by decreasing the oxalates, an acid that makes the minerals inaccessible in their connection.
On the other, it is also a great source of vitamins a and c, b-vitamin folate, minerals such as hydrationpotassium as well as bone construction calcium, magnesium and manganese. Everyone is too easily destroyed when cooked.
Eating this! Advice:
From a nutrition point of view, a combination of raw and cooked spinach will provide you with health benefits. Anyway, dress it with a little oil to reinforce your absorption of carotenoids and soluble lutein in fats.
Kale: Eat raw
Many studies show that too skin vegetables can actually break down their nutrients, which makes them much less healthy than their gross version. In particular, it is foods rich in water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C and B vitamins that are most sensitive to heat. A portion of Kale of 90 g provides you with 108 mcg folate, 99 mg of vitamin C and 117 mg of calcium (almost identical to a glass ofMilk!) - All important contributions to your daily consumption, but all micronutrients that can take a stroke of luck if cooked. In fact, about a third of vitamin C in Kale can be lost when boiled.
Eating this! Advice:
When you eat it raw, make sure you cut off well. Cut crude fruits and vegetables usually brakes nutrients by breaking rigid plants cell walls. If you cook, make sure it is done over low heat and without too much steam water, backing up or roast them. And add an oil drizzle to absorb the contents of the Kale lutein.
It's the same for: Vitamin B1 Foods (Sunflower Seeds and Beet Greens), Vitamin B6 Foods (Kale and Avocado), Vitamin B12 Food, ie Folate (fish and crustaceans (such as clams) and vitamin C food (peppers). In fact, according to the search for national health institutes, a significant percentage of vitamin C in bell peppers - totaling 150% of your DV-decompose if cooked above 375 degrees.
Zucchini: Boil
A report in theJournal of Agriculture and Food ChemistryExamined the impact of different cooking techniques on compounds such as carotenoids, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and polyphenols (such as antioxidant quercetin) in the zucchini. The researchers found that boiling effectively increases carotenoids and maintains vitamin C levels in the zucchini relative to backup or steam. The researchers assumed that it is because frying or steam actually allows more light, oxygen and is at a higher temperature than boiling - all factors that cause deterioration of these antioxidants.
Eating this! Advice:
While boiling always provides high percentages of beta-carotene, it always decreases the amount of polyphenols in the zucchini. The simple solution? Let the zucchini in the stock you have boiled, which will now have all these polyphenols soluble in the water and make our favoriteMinestrone soup.
Garlic: crush and cut
You know these noisy necklaces in the dark whom they go to block games and July 4th? You will clap them, some chemicals mix together, then Bam! Bright sticks! Well, a similar thing happens when you crush garlic. The garlic contains allicin - the same compound that makes clove a breathtaking killer - which acts as a nasty fat burner and could have anticancer effects. The only plug? The precursor of the allicin, allio, is packaged from the enzyme necessary to transform it into the fight against cancer. By simply crushing your garlic clove, the enzyme and allin mix, and you get ALLICIN!
Eating this! Advice:
While a minute of alliniase cooking (the enzyme) is completely inactivated, the allicin is relatively stable thermal. So, if you crush and chop your garlic, then wait about 10 minutes for allicin to form, you can then cook. If you want to keep it raw, add garlic to pestos, salsas and at home - notultra-transformed-vinaigrettes.
Bread: Toast
The bread gets a bad rap as a source of "empty calories" that points out your blood glucose and causes the conservation of your body. But a study published in theEuropean clinical nutrition newspaper Discovered that the bread mesh can significantly reduce its glycemic index - a measure of how your blood glucose increases in response to a certain food, being less than the glycemic index being less likely to cause crampons associated with weight gain .
Eating this! Advice:
If you start bread first, then grilling, the amount of glucose that your blood absorbs after eating is half the quantity that you absorb fresh bread. (You are literallyMake bread more weight loss!) The researchers suspect that starch molecules in bread are taking a different structure following freezing, defrosting and mesh, which means that your body must work stronger to break the sugar.
Eggs: poach
What is the healthiest part of the egg: the white or theEgg yolk? We say both and the nutritionists agree. Because while the egg-free egg white contains most egg enabling proteins, it is the creamy yellow that contains all the essential fatty acids, nutrients against diseases and vitamins soluble in fat , including choline, vitamin B-vitamin that helps prevent the accumulation of belly fat. Research shows the maximization of the health value of an egg can go down to the cooking method:
Eating this! Advice:
Although studies suggest that organized egg white proteins are more easily digested because they are already distorted, some research has found a raw or flowing yellow contains up to 50% more nutrients than a yellow cooked to the cup. The solution: poaching - a fat-free cooking method that involves cracking an egg in cooled water.
Pasta and potatoes: thrill
Did you know that pasta can be a weight loss food? Well, the cold pasta that are. The temperature drop when you put pasta or potatoes in the refrigerator changes the nature of the starches in something called "resistant starch"Proven with slow digestion and fostering fat burning. Some natural resistant stars are lentils, peas, beans and oatmeal, which pass through the intact inner intestine, you keep longer, Longer. Research suggests that evening starch can increase feelings of satiety of more than 50% and also promote fuel combustion. Just say that colder noodles are warmer.
Eating this! Advice:
You can shake a cold pasta salad with fresh vegetables and a light olive oil vinaigrette or just heat your remains! An experience on the BBC showBelieve me, I'm a doctor, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Denise Robertson, a senior nutrition scientist at the University of Surrey, found remains could be even healthier than an original pasta meal. They could reduce by 50% a tip of blood glucose!
Bays: buy frozen or eating raw
The blueberries pack a powerful antioxidant punch and the gel of the anti-disease berries can make them even healthier, according to a researcher from the Southern State University Dakota. This is because anthocyanas, health antioxidants that also give bays their brilliant blue hue, are mainly found in the skin. The ice crystals that form during the freezing of the walls of the pierced cell, allowing anthocyanins to be more available. Blueberry cooking has the opposite effect, according to a study published inAgricultural Chemistry and Food Journal This has shown that anthocyanin levels dropped from 10 to 21% after cooking.
These are not only blueberries either. There is a lot ofWeight loss foods you should buy Gelen. When you spit fruit from their source, they are cut off from their nutrient diet. The more they are separated, the more nutritional value they lose. Some experts believe that at the time you take a "cool" of fruits or vegetables at the grocery store, he may have lost 15 to 60% of many vitamins. And when the products are frozen, is frozen the same day it is picked, preserving nutrition and antioxidants.
Eating this! Advice:
Buy your frozen bays to harvest the benefits, even if you want to break them open as soon as you come home. Frozen varieties are perfect in smoothies as well as making fruit sauces to lie down on ice cream.
Grilling?: Use a grill basket
While you like can like the flavor slightly burned that your grill ready for Veggie Kabobs, the hot and dry environment can exhaust the nutrients of your product. What is worse, if you leave them on the grill long enough that they develop a carbonal carbonaceous appearance, it is a sign that the vegetables could have been exposed to benzopyrene, a carcinogenic chemical found in the cigarette smoke. Another nutritional catastrophe recipe? Cut vegetables into the oil, then cook them on an extremely high heat to try to sit at the dinner table earlier. When the oil is exposed to extreme heat, it creates smoke can decompose antioxidants into vegetables.
Eating this! Advice:
The next time you are barbecued outside, fosse the Kabobs and cook your vegetables in a grill basket instead. This tactic eliminates the risk of consuming dangerous loaders, while helping vegetables retain their moisture, vitamins and minerals. Whisk dinner inside? Paste on high strength cooking heat and jump the drizzle olive oil before heating your vegetables. Dry cook and add fat after help reduce antioxidant exhaustion smoke.
How to prepare
Grain and legumes: soaking and germinating
If you thought you were hurting you, take a charge of what the beans make. Actuallypulse(Beans, peas and lentils), whole grain cereals and seeds are high in phytic acid. This diabolic compound binds to minerals such as iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium, which makes them unavailable for absorption. When grains, beans, peas and streams are sprouted, it reduces the phytic acid content to make its nutrients more bioavailable to the body. The germination seed also begins to release enzymes that break down protein and carbohydrates, which helps make these foods more easily digestible, which allows us to absorb lost nutrients. It does not stop there. The apparent germination process increases the quantity and bioavailability of certain vitamins (such as vitamin C) and minerals, making the grains sprouted an even larger nutrition plant.
Eating this! Advice:
According to the Weston A. Price, the best way to reduce phytates in beans is to germinate them, then cooking them. They found that soaking pulses at moderate temperatures for 12 hours result in a reduction of 8 to 20% of phytates. Too long, then the seed can completely germinate and lose its digestibility.
Strawberries: Eating Entire
While you might be everything about thatmeal meal Life, you could do more harm than good. Slicing strawberries exposes them to light and oxygen, which can break down their precious vitamin C! Although it can be a bad news of news, the fix is simple: the pop them in your whole mouth!
Eating this! Advice:
If necessary, wash and cut strawberries just before using them. And to take even more vitamin C, researchers suggest storing them in the refrigerator.
Kiwis: Eat the skin
It can be brown and blurred, but do not let it turn off. "Kiwi fruit skin contains a lowering fiber of cholesterol, antioxidants and immune vitamin C," says Lisa Moskovitz, R.D., founder of the NY NUTRITION group. Just as you would rinse a fishing or a pear to reduce your exposure to pesticides and chemicals, washingKiwis is essential if you plan to bite in.
Eating this! Advice:
News more surprising on this small green fruit: Kiwis contains an actinidine, an enzyme that violates the protein, making it a great tender. Instead of launching older kiwi, use them to rub both sides of the steak or poultry, then transfer the meat into a ziploc bag for 20 minutes to give it time to absorb the juice and fail.
It's the same for: Cucumbures - If you remove the skin from your cucumbers, you peel the same nutrients (such as fiber and vitamin A) that make the Veggie health facility. The fibrous skin can help increase the feelings of satiety, supplying your weight loss efforts.
Lemons and limes: keep the peels
Citrus fruit peels provide you with a compound called D-Limonene, a powerful antioxidant that stimulates hepatic enzymes, helping to rid the body of toxins and rinse fat from your system. The only drawback? There are not too much attractive ways to eat it. Your best bet is to grill the peels - in the same way as you would with cheese and store them in a freezer bag.
Eating this! Advice:
Throw citrus slices or just their peelings in a pitcher of water to make your ownwater. If you feel a little more adventurous, make your own friction of citrus meat. Here's how: dry mandarin or orange peelings in an oven 200 degrees F. Let them cool down before cutting them very finely. Combine 1/4 cup of dried peels with 2 tablespoons salt and a spoon with black pepper.
Linen seeds: grind
The flax seed is a source of quality of important food staples, proteins and fiber, as well as a source of omega-3 anti-inflammatory herbal. But if you want to maximize these nutrients, you will need to grit flax seeds. Their hulls are so difficult, eating whole linen seeds, it will just result in passing through you undigested and not having transmitted their advantages.
Eating this! Advice:
Do not fall for pre-soil flax seeds, though. They will lose their power within 24 hours of land only if you keep them in the freezer. Your best bet is to buy a bag of whole linen seeds and grind them as if necessary.
Tea: Microwave
The tea is the closest thing we are currently having a magic weight loss Elixir. Rich compounds for health promotion called catechins, sipping regularly the drink can fry obstinacy belly fat and even fighting the disease. But if you want to reap the best-body advantages, zap your microwave cup.
Eating this! Advice:
After performing a series of preparation scenarios in a laboratory, researchers found that heating a cup of tea brewed in the microwave for one minute before enjoying the availability of the catechin of nearly 20%. It also slightly increased the caffeine content! Researchers warn that the extra brewing time can give tea a slightly bitter taste and suggest infused fruitgreen tea varieties that help mask the taste.
Fruits and vegetables: mix them
Again another reason to love smoothies: you absorb even more nutrients! For one thing, smoothies act like more efficient chewers. Because the mixture helps to break down the vegetable cell walls of vegetables and vegetable vegetables, your body has a time easier absorbing nutrients compared to whether it had to chew every bit of your food until it is Tour to the muscade before swallowing. In addition, decomposing these cell walls allows physically physically separated compounds in the cell enzymes normally blocked in the cell and their targets stuck in the walls of the cell - to mix and pass through beneficial chemical reactions.
Eating this! Advice:
One of these snap-and-mix creations results in the formation of isothiocyanates, which have powerful anticancer properties and have been demonstrated to inhibit the growth of tumor and cancer. They are found in foods like curly cabbage and cress, that's why it's a good idea to add green to your smoothie. And we can not insist on this issue: mix, not juice juice. When production goes through the fruit juice machine, its fiber-rich skins and pasta that helps increase satiety are left left.
How to pair
Rice: Mix with oil
There is an easy natural way to make rice less caloric; And, quite strangely, it involves adding grease. After many rice variety test towers and different cooking methods, researchers at the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka have found the best way to cook rice. Their caloric hacking works at two levels: the cooling of hot rice changes the nature of the starch in a shape that resists to be ventilated and that the added grease acts as a barrier against rapid digestion.
Eating this! Advice:
Boil a pot of water and place a teaspoon of coconut oil. Add half a cup of rice and cook for about 40 minutes. After cooking, hold it in the refrigerator for 12 hours. The rice cooked in this way had at least 10 times the resistant starch and 10-15% fewer calories than normally prepared rice; And researchers believe that with certain types of rice, the method could cut calories from 50 to 60%. The best news: the low carbohydrate hack is safe for the remains, because to warm rice has not affected the resistant starch levels.
Salad: Pair of olive oil or lawyer
Bas-calories, rich in vitamins and full of important nutrients that can shrink at size, vegetables are a better friend of Dieter; But you will not have many benefits from a garden salad without adding a little fat, researchers say. And thehealthy fatsfound in olive oil supreme reign. A study found that salads with monounsaturated olive oil fats required the least amount of vinaigrette (only 3 grams) to obtain the most affected carotenoid absorption by the disease with polyunsaturated or saturated grease dressings ( which required 20 grams for the same advantage). Another study revealed that when dinners associated with salsa or salad with fatty-rich lawyers, they absorb up to 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times beta-carotene. Those who had their simple vegetables or low grease dressing.
Eating this! Advice:
Give your Greens the ultimate nutrient boost with a lightweight extra blank olive oil cover. Or, you can add a tasty guacamole spoon, some slices of feeslawyer, or a tablespoon of oil-based vinaigrette-lawyer have the same monounsaturated fat health than olive oil. These people to dress up people do not know what they are missing.
Turcuma: Pair with black pepper
Even some spices need a little bioavailability. This is the case of curcumin, a bioactive whistle phytochemistry that has been demonstrated to have a wide range of biological actions, particularly as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticarcinogenic and anticancer agent. Unfortunately, it is notorious not to be easily absorbed by our body because most of the curcumin we consume is metabolized before being able to enjoy its plethora of benefits.
Eating this! Advice:
According to a study by St. John's Medical College, eating curcuma with black pepper can increase the absorbability of curcumin thanks to the piperine content of the black pepper. Piperine helps slow down the metabolism of curcumin liver. These same benefits are what helps black pepper stop the formation of new fat cells, making it an essential food to help you getBeach body ready.
Create a curry powder with curcuma, freshly ground black pepper, cumin, cardamom, coriander, dry mustard and cayenne pepper. Use it to season chicken and serve with one side of rice and vegetables like onions, cauliflower and zucchini.
Cocao: Pair with cooking powder
We love a slice of chocolate cake as much as the next guy, but we like a slice of chocolate cake that reduces our risk of heart disease and further strengthens our cerebral power. And that's what makes this healthy cooking pirate particularly soft. A study published in theJournal of Food Science has shown that the use of a combination of cooking powder and soda bicarbonate could keep more than 85% ofcocoaCardiac protective flavanols have lost in the hot cooking process.
Eating this! Advice:
Partially substitute cooking powder for baking soda. The combo resulted in a large and attractive cake that preserves almost all the flavanoles and antioxidants promoting health.
Steak or spinach: pair with tomatoes
And no green tea. Curious combination, but we see that we will notify you. According to a recent study, iron in meat and plants as spinach do not play well with antioxidants of green tea. Polyphenols bind with iron in the intestines, thus preventing the mineral from absorbing and passing it instead of waste. Vitamin C, on the other hand, can block these food compounds that inhibit absorption. Not only that, but it helps to improve the bioavailability of plant-based iron-based iron-based iron-based sources, the less powerful shape compared to the animal-based haemer dread up to 6 times more than without Vitamin.
Eating this! Advice:
Whether you eat a steak, spinach, kales orLentils (All major sources of iron), make sure to associate them with foods rich in vitamin C, such as tomatoes, lemon juice, strawberries or pepper peppers.
Asparagus: Pair of salmon
If you try to keep you with a low fat diet, you can make your health a bad service. According to researchers at the State University of Iowa and Ohio, combining a little fat with red, yellow, orange and dark green vegetables helps the body to absorb cancer and healthy heart nutrients like the Lycopene and beta-carotene as well as the soluble fat Vitiamines A, D, E and K. The results of the study show that you will need to consume six grams of fat added with your vegetables to harvest the maximum nutritional benefits. It's less than half a tablespoon of olive oil!
Eating this! Advice:
Associate your vegetables with healthy sources of grease. Vitamin A Food (sweet potatoes, carrots, squash), vitamin D food (eggs, mushrooms), vitamin E food (spinach and asparagus) and vitamin K food (curly cabbage, spinach and broccoli) must be balanced with healthy fats like olive oil or coconut, lawyer, fatty fish, walnuts or Full yogurt .