When considering the amount of antioxidants in foods, the cooking method can increase or decrease the amount of oxidant power of a food.
Unfortunately there seems to be much disagreement about what is the best cooking method. Though there is general agreement that different fruits and vegetables react in different ways to the various cooking methods.
Part of the problem is that everybody seems to use their favorite method for measuring antioxidant power. The problem with antioxidants is that there is a range of them, with different structures and different mechanisms of action. So there can be very different methods for analysis.
However, it is clear that some vegetables have increased antioxidant power after cooking. Raw is not always best.
A recent study carried out in Spain, compared the effects of a number of different cooking methods on twenty vegetables.
The six cooking methods were boiling, pressure-cooking, baking, microwaving, griddling (hot pan without oil) and frying.
They found the following
- The highest antioxidant loss was observed in cauliflower after boiling and microwaving, peas after boiling, and zucchini after boiling and frying.
- Green beans, beets, and garlic were found to keep their antioxidant levels after most cooking treatments.
- The vegetables that increased their antioxidant levels after all cooking methods were green beans (except green beans after boiling), celery and carrots.
The researchers in this study suggest that water-based cooking methods most frequently resulted in losses. This is agreement with most, but not all, other studies that have suggested that for many vegetables, in particular brassicas such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower boiling is results in loss of some types of antioxidants.
It seems everything just gets more complicated. Do we have to cook all the components of a meal in different ways to get the most beenfit?
[tags]vegetable, antioxidant power, broccoli, boiling, cooking[/tags]
