Cooking is crucial for a diet. It helps to digest food, saving huge amounts of energy. Heat treatment softens food, especially fiber and hard meat, with which our small teeth, weak jaws and digestive system are not ready to "work directly".
However, recently we often hear from the raw food that cooking kills vitamins and minerals in food. However, raw vegetables, as we all know very well, are not always healthy food.
Fresh or boiled?
The British magazine Nutrition ("Nutrition") reports that Rui Hai Liu, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University, conducted a serious study of raw food. One of the findings of the study concerned lycopene (an antioxidant that is more potent than vitamin C). Liu believes that thermal treatment actually increases the content of lycopene in vegetables, because it destroys the hard shell and helps the body to fully absorb it.
In addition, cooking in some cases reduces its caloric content by half. The energy value of fresh carrots is 41 kcal, and the calorie content of cooked carrots is 24 kcal per 100 g. At the same time, researchers note that if boiled whole carrots, its useful properties increase by 25%.
How useful carrots?
Carrots are useful not only for strengthening our eyesight, hair and nails. The Dutch scientists confirmed that carrots are one of the most effective vegetables in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. And if we return to the conversation about vision, then we will be pleased with the institution of Jules Stein from Los Alange. His team found that women who eat carrots twice a week, compared with women who consume carrots less often, have significantly lower rates of glaucoma.