What Cooking Method Gives You The Most Nutritional Value From Your Food?
What we eat is one of the biggest contributing factors to living a healthy life. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, nutrition is at the forefront of success; you don’t see too many professional athletes eating doughnuts and you certainly don’t feed infants candy bars.
Odds are that you’re not a pro athlete or an infant, but you are probably very conscious about what goes into your body and want to maximize the nutritional value of the food you put into your body . What you might not know is that the nutritional values of food changes depending on it’s preparation method, eg. how they’re cooked, are they processed, etc.
let’s take a step back and quickly define the term nutritional value so we’re all on the same page. Nutritional value is a qualitative descriptor of the foods you eat, and refers to the types and amounts of nutrients it contains; in particular micronutrients like vitamins and minerals, and the macronutrients profiles of proteins, carbs, and fats. Different preparation methods will change the nutritional value of foods in various ways. This blog post will tell you what the best cooking method is to get the most nutritional value from your food. It will also touch on how the nutritional value of your food is affected by different cooking methods.
For those of you that just want the “coles notes,” version here your answer:
All cooking methods affect the nutritional value of our foods. The cooking method that best retains nutrients, and therefore would promote the highest nutritional value of the food, is one that: cooks quickly, uses lower temperatures, and uses as little liquid as possible.
Of all of the cooking methods out the available, this means the Microwave is the one of the best ways to retain your food’s vitamins and minerals! Yes, despite what you may have thought and what the mainstream media might suggest, when we look at all of these methods with a scientific lense the answer is clear. And no, microwaves don’t cause dangerous radiation compounds in your food; but you should use microwavable-safe containers or you could be leaching plastics int your food.
For those of you that want more detailed information, read on.
Before we analyze the cooking methods, here’s what you need to know about Vitamins & Minerals in regards to how they can be “lost” from said food:
- Vitamins D, E, A, and K are fat soluble; this means they dissolve and are stored in fat. Cooking methods that promote the loss of fat will promote the loss of these vitamins.
- Vitamins B (B1, B2, B3, B6, Folate, B12, Biotin) and C are water soluble; this means they dissolve and are stored in water. Cooking methods that use water, or promote the loss of water from the food (eg. juices from steak on the barbeque), will promote the loss of these vitamins.
- Minerals (the main ones are Potassium, Magnesium, Sodium, and Calcium) are water soluble, therefore cooking methods that use water can promote the loss of these vitamins during that stage.
- Many Vitamins are prone to degradation (breakdown) from UV light.
- Heat will breakdown many types of vitamins; vitamins B and C are the most sensitive to heat.
Now let’s take a look at the different cooking methods, and asses them based on how quick they cook, what heat is used, how long it takes, and how much liquid is used. I’ve made a table as a nice visual to compare them all.
- Cooking Method:
- Microwave
- Steaming
- Boiling
- Pan-Frying
- Baking
- Grilling
- Time to cook:
- Short
- 10 minutes +
- 10 – 30 + minutes
- 5-30 minutes
- 20-30 minutes +
- 10-30 minutes
- Amount of liquid used:
- Very Little
- Little bit
- A lot
- None to very little.
- Some
- None
- Temperature:
- 100 C
- Sub 100 C
- 100 C
- 150 C +
- 180 C +
- 250 C +
References: