The Nutritional Value of Food

Food Nutrition Guide on What You Must Know …

Retaining the nutritional value of food in our meals is of paramount importance to our health and that of our families’. Health is Wealth! Without Health, there will be no time to make money, or to spend money.

We can talk about healthy eating until we’re blue in the face; but if we’re not talking about the significance of retaining the nutritional value of food too, we’re not being serious about healthy eating yet. We can lose a lot of nutrition in our meals while preparing our foods just by the way we prepare and cook it.

Common Ways of Losing Nutrition That You Should Avoid

The combination of heat, water and air kills nutrition in foods. We mainly lose nutritional value of our foods that we cook through:

1. Peeling

For any foods that grow under the ground, a lot of the vitamins are found just under the skin. Yes that’s right, more of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals are just under the skin.

For example, potatoes – most of the nutrition is just under the skin. So just by peeling them, we peel past the thin layer under the skin and lose a lot of the main vitamins, minerals and nutrients. On the other hand, in the case of foods that grow above the ground, the nutrition is mainly in the core or centre. For instance, bananas and oranges.

2. Excessive Heat

Excessive heat can be split into a few common methods of cooking; two of which are boiling and steaming. When we heat our foods above 90 degrees centigrade (F), the nutritional value of food is largely destroyed. While cooking, bringing food up to boiling temperature causes even more loss of nutrients from food.

3. Steaming

Steaming is even worse. Steaming occurs at temperatures of 102 degrees centigrade to 120 degrees centigrade. This makes sense since the water has to boil first before steaming. When you buy broccoli and similar vegetables from the supermarket, nutritionists and dieticians usually advice to only steam for 3 to 5 minutes. But some people find they can’t realistically do that always, can you? Unless of course you want to eat raw. So you end up steaming for a little bit longer and end up losing even more of the nutrients in the food.

This is why the water at the bottom of a steamer still changes colour when you steam. When you lose colour, you lose vitamins. And when you lose taste, you lose minerals.

4. Cooking in Water

Most foods naturally have juices in them and do not need adding water to, to cook. When you cook peas or spinach for instance, and put some water in, what colour does the water turn to? Green! When you cook carrots in water, the water turns orange. This is because the water takes on the colour of the vegetables. Experts say, when you lose colour, you lose vitamins and part of the nutritional value of food; and when you lose taste or flavour, you’ve lost minerals.

The nutrition we are throwing away unconsciously is exactly what our bodies need to fight diseases, to perform its functions properly, and for good subsistence.

You can retain the nutritional value of food in the meals you cook in quite a few ways. Here’s our food nutrition guide on how to retain nutrition in your meals, and how to get nutrition for life.

The information here is for general guidance only.
Talk to your doctor before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.