How to Cook Vegetables

Agatha M. Thrash, M.D.

Preventive Medicine

More vitamins, minerals, and delicious flavor are lost in preparing vegetables than in any other aspect of the culinary art. Legumes and grains have to be cooked until tender or sprouted to be best utilized. Fruits are most often eaten raw. But our poor vegetable friends are commonly man-slaughtered by sitting, soaking, peeling, and worst of all, boiling.

Vegetables have an abundant supply of vitamins and minerals that are essential to the life of each cell, and thus for optimum health and pleasant dispositions. From the point of view of nutrition, the chief purpose for eating vegetables is the high vitamin and mineral content.

The following steps in preparation will ensure maximum nutritive value: 

1. FRESH. Ideally, vegetables should be gathered just before being cooked (one of the joys of a garden!). But whatever your source, choose vegetables that are as fresh as possible. For example, know what days produce comes in at your grocery store. 

2. WASH QUICKLY and dry immediately to prevent the water-soluble nutrients and natural flavors from being washed away. 

3. CHILL in a dark place as quickly as possible. Some B vitamins are destroyed by light and at room temperature. Vitamin C is destroyed by contact with oxygen. Cut, chop, or shred vegetables when chilled, and if it will be a while before serving or cooking, return to refrigerator.

 

4. SOAKING causes the greatest loss of nutrients. Boiling—soaking while cooking—is soaking at its worst. Studies have shown 4 minutes of boiling a whole vegetable causes losses of 20-45% of total minerals, 75% of natural sugars, and even greater losses of some vitamins. Since vegetables are frequently soaked both before and during cooking, and boiled longer than 4 minutes, these losses are commonly greater. 

5. PEELING, next to soaking, causes the greatest nutritive loss. The minerals are concentrated immediately under the skin. The peeling helps hold the vitamins, for example, by keeping oxygen from destroying the vitamin C. Peel vegetables only when the skin is tough, bitter, or too uneven to clean thoroughly. 

6. COOKING TIME: The shorter the cooking time, the more delicious the flavor and the greater the nutritive value. Make it a rule to cook vegetables in the shortest time possible, just until crispy tender, guarding carefully against overcooking. The bright colors, as well as flavor and texture, will be preserved yielding a much more palatable dish.

METHODS 

STEAMING or WATERLESS cooking are two of the best methods. If you do not have waterless cookware, use only enough water to keep vegetables from burning; or use one of the collapsible steam racks which adjust to fit almost any size pot.

PAN COOKING or “STIR-FRYING” is an excellent method also. Bring enough water to cover the bottom of a frying pan (about 1/4 cup) to boil using medium heat. Add sliced or chopped vegetables, stirring frequently until desired doneness. Add water tablespoon by tablespoon as needed to keep vegetables from sticking to the pan. Cooking time varies from 5-20 minutes. Summer squashes (for example, crookneck, zucchini) are done in 5 minutes; broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage in about 10 minutes; and carrots may take 20 minutes. Onion, green pepper, pimiento, celery, herbs, and salt may be selected to season vegetables.

PRESSURE COOKING should just be reserved for “emergencies,” as, despite the convenience of immediate results, the increased temperature does kill more vitamins. The pressure cooker, with its rack, may be used for steaming with the pressure not applied.

May you enjoy the wide variety of vegetables—rich in flavor, filled with nutrients, bright with color, and delightful in texture!

For more information contact:

Uchee Pines Lifestyle Center

30 Uchee Pines Road #75

Seale, Alabama 36875

Tel. 334-855-4764

www.ucheepines.org

Heal Yourself With Raw Food

Eating raw foods everyday especially most vegetables, fruits, nuts or seeds is the best way to benefit from all the nutrients in the food and helps the body to heal or cure and prevent itself from diseases naturally. There have been cases where cancer patients have healed themselves by switching to a diet of mainly raw vegetables, nuts and seeds.

The other benefit is that raw foods contain their own digestive enzymes, which lessen the demand on the pancreas and cells of the intestinal lining to produce these enzymes. This is the reason why most people who eat a largely raw food diet have less constipation than those who eat mostly cooked foods. 

The other benefit of eating raw vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds is that they are an abundant source of fibre, which encourages the removal of toxic waste and excess cholesterol or bad fats from the body. Therefore if we want to benefit to the maximum from the food we eat we need to eat a diet based largely on raw vegetables, nuts and seeds. This will also help to heal ourselves and prevent diseases naturally.

The Harmful Effect of Boiling Food

Boiling food destroys most of life giving nutrients in vegetables rendering the food lifeless with very little nutrient content. It has been estimated that on average boiling vegetables destroys approximately 40% of B vitamins and 70% of vitamin C. These nutrients that we destroy are the same nutrients that we need to help the body heal itself and to prevent diseases that continue to kill millions such as cancer.

If at all possible boiling food should be avoided and food should be eaten in its raw form. Eating raw will bring vibrancy to the body and provide the body with all the nutrients it needs to operate at maximum efficiency. If you boil food make sure that there is little water as possible and this is done for a very short period of time. It would be better if you can not eat your food raw to steam them instead as this preserves most of the nutrient value of the food.

The eating of boiled food and less if none at all raw food explains the reason why some who are vegeterians or vegans may not be getting all the benefits of a vegeterian lifestyle such as less cancers. It has been estimated that when you boil vegetables such as carrots for ten minutes the water contains more vitamin C than the carrots. On average boiling destroy