How do you cook your vegetables so you can preserve, and get the most of, their antioxidant powers? The answer (like most things in life) is: “It depends”! In the Journal of Food Science, Spanish researchers from the University of Murcia found that vegetables reacted differently to different cooking methods:
They looked at how the ability of 20 different vegetables to neutralize or “scavenge” three types of free radicals was affected by boiling, pressure-cooking, baking, microwaving, griddling, or frying. Effects varied widely among the different foods, the researchers found. [Quality Health]
While asparagus magically retained its powers no matter how it was cooked, others seemed to actually get better with cooking!
In general, microwaving or griddling — heating the vegetable on a heavy skillet without oil — did the best job of preserving antioxidant activity [...] Boiling and pressure cooking generally caused the greatest loss of antioxidant capacity [Quality Health]
While you can read the article for a few more details about other vegetables, the takeaway is that it’s very important to determine the best way to cook your vegetables so that you don’t inadvertently lose much of the very antioxidant powers you are hoping to get from them.
[Via Lifehacker]
