The nutrients in some foods are made more available to us humans by cooking - but cooking destroys some nutrients in other foods, so I steam my broccoli.
While I prepare my lunch I eat raw carrots - a kg a week. Are raw carrots a "good food" or would I get more benefit from them if I cooked them?
Hi S11m, great question.
Yes, when we cook our vegetables, we either destroy or deplete some of their nutrients.
Here’s something so interesting about carrots is it’s best to have them cooked: “The cooking process releases more beta-carotene, which is an antioxidant that gets converted to vitamin A in your body, which is beneficial to your eyes and immune system.”
I saw a little food show on channel 4 a while ago, where they assessed the effects of different cooking methods on nutrient content of food. Annoyingly they didn't cover steaming, but it was interesting and only 5mins! I think this is it:
channel4.com/programmes/foo...
I stumbled upon this article for carrots specifically:
berkeleywellness.com/health...
In general though, the main drawback with boiling/steaming, is that if nutrients do come out, they'll leach into the water and then we pour the water down the drain. You can get some of that nutrient content back into your body by ingesting the vegetable water in other ways, for example, by making soup, you'd ingest the vegetables and the water. You could also use the water to cook rice with, or in sauces.
I think the channel 4 lady is missing something very important with her fat phobia: you can't absorb the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) without eating fat along with them. So her microwaved veggies might have the most vitamins, but unless she puts some butter on them, or there is fat elsewhere on her plate, many of those vitamins are going to pass straight through.
It is said by some nutritionalists that the best way is to cook them to get the maximum from them, But I like grating some raw carrot into salads and sandwich fillers.
I do eat them cooked too.
Nutrition is not the only purpose of food. You clearly enjoy raw carrots, so keep eating them! You don't have to maximise the nutrition of every morsel you eat, especially at the expense of your pleasure in eating it.
The RDA for vitamin A is 3000 iu. A kilogram of raw carrots is 167,000 iu 🤯. So you are getting around 10x the RDA of vitamin A. I think that is plenty, especially as it's a toxin in high enough dosages.
Is your skin orange? 🍊
I eat carrots as a starter while I am cooking the rest of the meal... so, eating them raw seemed a good idea. I have not noticed my skin being orange.
I am taking about double the "toxic" dose - but it says that toxicity normally only occurs when you supplement.
I have butter and cheese with jacket potatoes - so that should be sufficient fat to absorb the vitamins.
Perhaps I will make a kilo of carrots last a fortnight - or two. 1kg a month is about halfway between the recommended dose and the toxic dose.
I also eat two or three heads of broccoli a week - is that poisonous?
A Model recommends two carrots a day (which, I think, is too much)!:
Honestly, unless your skin is orange, I don't think you are in the slightest danger. They sold beta carotene tanning pills and I don't think they poisoned anyone.
I think you can get toxicity from eating too much liver, too, but it has to be a lot of liver. They think that happened to the Mawson polar expedition.
I have no knowledge of deadly broccoli 😂
Actually, I have to say that as a nurse I once looked after someone with hepatic damage due to eating to many carrots. They had about 4 a day for years, they also had quite an orange tinge about them. Initially we all thought it was a joke in handover but it shows that the phrase “everything in moderation” is true.
I am thinking of cutting down from a kilo a week to a kilo a month.
Might be a good thing. But they are so moorish
I’m reading this laughing hard 😂🤣😂 I’m glad I brought good news to you about carrots 🥕
Aside: carrots are mutants. They used to be other colours than orange, but at some point Dutch farmers breed a mutant strain to celebrate the royal family, and that variety supplanted all the other ones. Now you have to look very hard to find a purple carrot.
Not to hard.....I have white, orange, yellow and purple carrots growing in my garden. I will happy to post some pictures once I harvest them, although it’s my first attempt at growing them so don’t expect anything to special. I’m just overjoyed that they have germinated. Rainbow carrot seed was available for 99p and I thought I’d give it a go after eating some at Christmas, homegrown by a friend.
Vegan, Spicy sprout and carrot soup with chestnut mushrooms 🥣
Is a raw food diet actually bad?
