How Nutrition Can Be Retained in Fruits and Vegetables
March 5, 2010
Fresh fruits and vegetables are packed with phytochemicals and minerals and vitamins. It depends a lot on how you treat them or how you consume them actually so as to conserve the goodness in these fruits and vegetables.
Do you microwave the? Does microwaving help or does it take away all the minerals and vitamins from fruits and vegetables? How should you buy the vegetables and fruits? Should you buy them frozen or fresh? Can your body absorb all the nutrition that is good for you?
How do you like the term, ripe and farm-fresh foods? It’s true that the farm-fresh fruits definitely taste and smell better and they should contain the minerals and vitamins too. But that’s not it always. You can avoid spoilage during the storage or during the transport of the fruits.
So when the harvest is over, the vegetables and fruits start losing the goodness of nutrition. When they are on transit and they pass through the supermarket and to your fridge they have lost almost all the nutrition.
Vegetables are fruits that are freezed are picked while they get closer to the point of ripeness. These are frozen in haste and that’s done immediately after the fruits are picked. The process does get rid of some of the nutrients but the rest of the nutrients, the minerals and the vitamins get locked up in the fruit for 12 months. In that sense the fruits that have been freezed have more minerals and vitamins for your requirements.
This is how you can retain the minerals and vitamins in frozen vegetables and fruits. The highest levels of the Vitamin C can be retained if the vegetables are not thawed before they are cooked. That way the vegetables retain much more vitamins and minerals than those which are thawed. If you get farm-fresh fruits it is best to eat the fruits within a few days of buying them.
It’s not yet settled whether it is good to microwave or not. It is generally researched that the microwave sucks the nutrients out of the food. It is said that any cooking would lower the content of nutrition. But anyway if the skin is left the antioxidants are not lost because the antioxidants are present in the skin. You have to wash the fruits and vegetables carefully before eating. The vegetables can be boiled, sauteied or roasted before eating them.
That way the nutrients and minerals can be retained and you would get the best minerals and vitamins out of your fruits and vegetables.
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