Skip to main content
ask a health expert

A display of fruits and vegetables in the new grocery section of the new Wal-mart Supercentre in Stouffville, Ontario, Canada, opening Wednesday November 08, 2006.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

The question

Does cooking method (such as microwave versus stove top) affect how nutritious food is?

The answer

This is certainly the case for vegetables - how you cook them definitely makes a difference to their nutrient content.

Contrary to popular belief, cooked vegetables actually have a few advantages over raw. Cooking vegetables increases their content of disease-fighting antioxidants such as beta-carotene, lycopene and lutein. That's because heating vegetables releases these antioxidants by breaking down cell walls.

Cooking also releases minerals in vegetables that are bound to a natural compound called oxalic acid. You'll get more calcium, magnesium and iron if you eat your vegetables cooked rather than raw. Three cups of raw spinach, for example, has 90 milligrams of calcium whereas one cup of cooked has nearly triple the amount (259 milligrams).

However, when it comes to cooking water is your enemy. Boiling vegetables causes a significant amount of nutrients that dissolve in water - vitamin C, folate and thiamin (vitamin B1) - to be leached away. The longer you cook your veggies, and the more water you use, the more vitamins you'll lose.

Steaming is much gentler on nutrients because vegetables don't come in contact with cooking water. Dry cooking methods like grilling, roasting, stir-frying and microwave cooking without water also preserve a greater amount of nutrients than boiling or pressure cooking.

If you do use the microwave, you preserve the most antioxidants if you cook them without water and only until tender.

Bottom line: Steam vegetables or stir-fry briefly until tender, but crisp. If you cook vegetables in water, some vitamins will be leached into the cooking liquid. So use the liquid that's left over to make sauces or add extra flavour and nutrients to soups, stews and pasta sauces.

Send dietitian Leslie Beck your questions at dietitian@globeandmail.com. She will answer select questions, which could appear in The Globe and Mail and/or on The Globe and Mail web site. Your name will not be published if your question is chosen.

Read more Q&As from Leslie Beck.

Click here to see Q&As from all of our health experts.

The content provided in The Globe and Mail's Ask a Health Expert centre is for information purposes only and is neither intended to be relied upon nor to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe