Cooking vegetables causes large losses of some nutrients and vitamins, making vegetables easily digestible for the human body. How to determine the ideal "time" for cooking?

The healthiest way to cook vegetables is "al dente". In this way, we enhance the taste of food and retain the desired amount of nutrients in them. Experience shows that by cooking "al dente" the texture of the vegetables is slightly softened and the taste is full of expression.

Cooking on a steam?

Some types of vegetables is best cook on steam. In this way it retains the taste and the color and the valuable ingredients, and the body does not burden either with unnecessary fat, or with various roasting products.
Cooking on the steam goes much faster than traditional cooking in the water.
Shorter cooking time also reduces the loss of nutrition in cooked-in products. Traditional cooking causes loss of vitamins and minerals by as much as 40%. In the case of vitamin C, the losses can be reduced to 70%. Vegetables boiled in water retain only 36% of vitamin A, but cooked on pairs retains up to 62%. Vitamins from group B are also 'cut off' from the product during the cooking process.

Therefore, food should be prepared at lower temperatures, and vegetables should be picked from those that are poor in nitrates and absolutely do not heat them at all, because any heating increases the concentration of harmful ingredients.
When you're done cooking vegetables, it's not enough just to turn off the heat source. Remove the vegetables from the pot where you have cooked it, otherwise cooking will continue even when you remove the heat source.
Moreover, the vegetables continue to boil in their own heat even when you switch them to another bowl.

Modern cooking has also introduced new methods of healthier cooking, all with the aim to preserve as many nutrients as possible in foods. Therefore, they suggest healthy stewing, healthy steaming, short grilling in the oven and poaching it as the method that best highlights the taste of food and maintains the optimal amount of nutrients.

Raw, yes or no?

Today, from different sides, we hear suggestions that food is useful to eat raw, so we often come to the so-called "diets with raw food". Therefore, it is not to unnecessary to emphasize of why we cook the food:

• to make them quicker and easier to digest
• to increase the bioavailability of nutrients
• to emphasize or to support the taste of food
• to make the foods safe for consumption

By cooking vegetable cellulose and hemicellulose (water-soluble vegetable fiber) it is softened and our body can easily absorb nutrients from that vegetable.
Raw food certainly has its value, but for most people it is not a way of eating on long runs. Such a diet helps us reduce fat cells in the body and reduce the intake of sugar and salt because we do not eat processed food.

In addition, it deny us the nutrients needed to be healthy and in shape. There are very few, if any, scientific evidence supporting the claim that raw food gives us more energy, better digestion and more beautiful skin.

Here's a list of foods that are better to eat raw and cooked:

1. Tomato - best cooked
2. Broccoli - the best raw
3. Carrots - best cooked
4. Spinach - the best raw
5. Brussels sprouts - best cooked
6. Red pepper - the best raw
7. Cabbage - the best cook
8. Kale - the best raw

A well balanced diet contains raw and cooked vegetables!