Is it a myth, or boiled veggies are way less good than fresh ones (nutrition wise) ?
Some of the vitamins and other good stuff end up in the water, so drink the water when you’re finished (after it cools of course).
It’s a lot better to steam them. Lots of nutrients are water-soluble and you lose nutrition when you boil the veggies.
Buy one of those microwave steamers, they’re awesome. It’s basically a plastic bowl with a little tray on the bottom part of the boal to seperate the veggies from the little water that you put in the bottom of the bowl. SO when you microwave the veggies on the tray above the ater in the bowl, the water evaporates and softens the veggies. It’s very quick and easy.
Hope that makes sense.
I’m no expert, but I used to live with one (a Master’s graduate from CSU’s Food Science and Human Nutrition program) who taught me that boiling most vegetables causes a great deal of the micronutrients in them to denature. In other words, it gets destroyed when cooked so hot.
It would seem to make perfect sense, considering that if you boil water you find on a camping trip, say, it will “denature” most of the micro-organisms there, too.
Best advice is to eat your veggies raw or as close to raw as you can enjoy them to reap the maximum benefit from them.
I couldn’t find a suitable reference to give you right away, and I don’t talk to that girl anymore, so look around the web for confirmation or maybe shoot a question to Dr. Berardi or another nutrition expert on this forum.
Happy Vegging!
Or, if you aren’t into drinking a lot of boiled veggie juice, find a way to cook them that doesn’t leach out so much of the good stuff… 
[quote]huey.ot wrote:
It’s a lot better to steam them. Lots of nutrients are water-soluble and you lose nutrition when you boil the veggies.
But one of those microwave steamers, they’re awesome. It’s basically a plastic bowl with a little tray on the bottom part of the boal to seperate the veggies from the little water that you put in the bottom of the bowl. SO when you microwave the veggies on the tray above the ater in the bowl, the water evaporates and softens the veggies. It’s very quick and easy.
Hope that makes sense.[/quote]
Curious…since the veggies are in the microwave too, doesn’t that also “nuke” the veggies? Or do you put them in afterwards?
[quote]relucas wrote:
huey.ot wrote:
It’s a lot better to steam them. Lots of nutrients are water-soluble and you lose nutrition when you boil the veggies.
But one of those microwave steamers, they’re awesome. It’s basically a plastic bowl with a little tray on the bottom part of the boal to seperate the veggies from the little water that you put in the bottom of the bowl. SO when you microwave the veggies on the tray above the ater in the bowl, the water evaporates and softens the veggies. It’s very quick and easy.
Hope that makes sense.
Curious…since the veggies are in the microwave too, doesn’t that also “nuke” the veggies? Or do you put them in afterwards?[/quote]
The veggies are also microwaves.
just get a bench top vegtable steamer (cheap) great things, i use mine daily.
My mum just places a large woven kinda baskety thing ontop of a saucepan full of water and boils it until the veggies are soft.
Its not hard. Just dont nuke them.
so I could just steam them, and drink the veggies’ed water and it would be like as I ate them raw ?
because veggies and carrot are so much better steamed…
If you steam them, I don’t think you’d have any reason to bother with keeping the water.
Also, seriously, people have gotten on just fine without worrying about whether or not they drank the damned water after cooking vegetables.
There are a lot of food freaks around here that get entirely too concerned about doing everything “perfect” or whether or not something might “denature” when cooked. It all gets pretty damned denatured in our stomaches.
If you are eating vegetables often, you’ll be golden. Prepare them how you like them, or a variety of ways, and don’t worry about the really minor things.
[quote]vroom wrote:
If you steam them, I don’t think you’d have any reason to bother with keeping the water.
Also, seriously, people have gotten on just fine without worrying about whether or not they drank the damned water after cooking vegetables.
There are a lot of food freaks around here that get entirely too concerned about doing everything “perfect” or whether or not something might “denature” when cooked. It all gets pretty damned denatured in our stomaches.
If you are eating vegetables often, you’ll be golden. Prepare them how you like them, or a variety of ways, and don’t worry about the really minor things.[/quote]
C’mon Vroom, it cant be that simple! There has to be more to it or the food Nazi’s will uprise!
Instead of boiling throw vegi’s in bowl w/ fresh garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Then throw on a cookie sheet and broil.
I prefer to eat my vegetables raw.
[quote]KraigY wrote:
Instead of boiling throw vegi’s in bowl w/ fresh garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Then throw on a cookie sheet and broil.
[/quote]
Ya, there’s a lot of veggies out there that are tasty when baked/roasted.
There is NO reason to ever boil vegetables. Cook 'em in a wok or covered in asaucepan with just a little water or oil.
Also, aren’t all the guys using those veggie steamers worried about xenoestrogens? I still drink water from plastic bottles, but heating plastic to over 140 degrees is over-the-top - even for me.
[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
There is NO reason to ever boil vegetables. Cook 'em in a wok or covered in asaucepan with just a little water or oil.
Also, aren’t all the guys using those veggie steamers worried about xenoestrogens? I still drink water from plastic bottles, but heating plastic to over 140 degrees is over-the-top - even for me.
[/quote]
Have you never seen a metal stove top steamer?
[quote]huey.ot wrote:
It’s a lot better to steam them. Lots of nutrients are water-soluble and you lose nutrition when you boil the veggies.
[/quote]
menshealth’s site isnt loading right now, but there was an article on there showing how steaming actually increased antioxidants I believe? Hell it increased something, point was that steaming your veggies was quite healthy, just to agree with you.
[quote]PGA wrote:
Have you never seen a metal stove top steamer?[/quote]
Yes. That’s what I use.
[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
PGA wrote:
Have you never seen a metal stove top steamer?
Yes. That’s what I use.[/quote]
I misread you comment CL.
i throw mine on the foreman…hell i throw anything i can on the foreman. i love that little grill