Keeping the Color in your Vegetables!

Written by Elaine Twigg
Part of National Nutrition Month 2012

Vegetables are an important part of our diet, largely because many are either good or excellent sources of a variety of nutrients.

But did you know that the way you prepare your vegetables would drastically alter how many vitamins you are actually getting from them? Cooking losses can occur during many methods of cooking depending on how water-soluble the vegetable is, how much water it is cooked in, how high of a temperature the vegetable was cooked to, and how long it was held at that temperature.

Tips for preserving nutrients in your vegetables:

• Steam, broil, or microwave your vegetables instead of boiling them! You want to cook your vegetables in as little water as possible.

• Buy fresh produce instead of canned! Canned vegetables undergo a lot of heat processing, causing a loss of a lot of their nutrients.

• Serve your cooked veggies as soon as possible! The longer they sit, the more nutrients will be lost.

• Eat your veggies raw!

• Store your veggies in the fridge! Leaching of nutrients and wilting occurs at higher temperatures.

To demonstrate, I steamed one 12 oz. bag of broccoli and boiled the other 12 oz. bag of broccoli. Can you see the difference?

Here, you can actually see the color that has leached from the broccoli into the cooking water!  

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