Everyone knows vegetables are good for you, having the ability to stave off everything from heart disease to diabetes to cancer. But the way they’re prepared – or not prepared – has a bearing on how many nutrients can actually be used by our bodies. And there’s always the problem, of course, of getting them down our gullets in the first place. Here’s the skinny on how to cook them and consume them, and perhaps persuade our loved ones to eat them, too.
Cooked or Raw: The popular conception is that raw is always best, but this is often not true. “For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful,” said Dr. Steven Clinton, a nutrition researcher in the medical oncology division of Ohio State University. For instance, in the case of the potent antioxidant lycopene, which is a carotenoid present in tomatoes and other red vegetables, cooking breaks down cell walls in tomatoes, releasing the lycopene. Further, cooking tomatoes in olive oil may help the body absorb the lycopene more easily.
However, at the same time that cooking tomatoes releases lycopene, it destroys much of the vitamin C. Another example of a nutritional trade-off is carrots – cooked carrots provide more vitamin A than raw, but raw carrots provide more fiber. The simple answer to these two vegetable nutritional dilemmas and others like them is to eat vegetables both cooked and raw.
As far as commercial processing of vegetables goes, it turns out that some canned and frozen varieties actually deliver more nutrients than fresh, according to food experts including the Food and Drug Administration, because they are usually processed when their nutrient content is at its peak, while fresh may lose nutrients in warehouses, trucks, and on supermarket shelves. “If you shop once a week or less often, buy both fresh and processed – that is, canned or frozen – fruits, vegetables and juices,” the FDA said. “Use the fresh first; save the processed items for use later.”
How Much is Enough: It’s a lot, especially if you don’t like vegetables, but more on that in a moment. Current guidelines recommend 5 to 13 servings of vegetables a day, which translates to somewhere between about two cups and six cups a day. For someone who consumes about 2,000 calories a day, this means eating nine servings or about four and a half cups a day.
How to Get Everyone, Including Yourself, to Eat Vegetables: Remember George H.W Bush’s comment about broccoli? “I do not like broccoli,” he famously said. “And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.” While it may be too late to change the former President’s tastes, it’s never too early to interest your own children in vegetables, according to Julie Menella, a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. She believes that moms need to eat foods such as broccoli during pregnancy, or barring that, eat them while breast-feeding, since flavors from the mother’s diet are transmitted through amniotic fluid and mother’s milk. “Babies are born with a dislike for bitter tastes,” said Menella. “If mothers want their babies to learn to like to eat vegetables, especially green vegetables, they need to provide them with opportunities to taste these foods.”
For those of us who have already been weaned, there may still be some hope. While the answer certainly does not lie in French fried potatoes and deep-fried dill pickles, it lies at least in part in adding some perhaps not-so-healthy fats to vegetables, and also in cooking with organic vegetables. Conventional broccoli, for instance, often has an off-taste that is slightly fishy, while fresh organic broccoli that is steamed and served with a little melted butter drizzled over it with a dash of lemon juice can be, if not outrageously delicious, at least palatable to most tastes. According to Dr. Clinton, “Putting on things that make it taste better – spices, a little salt – can enhance your eating experience and make the food taste better, so you’re more likely to eat vegetables more often.”
Where to Begin: Begin with the Internet, of course, where everything else begins these days. Check local websites for sources of fresh, preferably organic vegetables. For recipes, try starting out with ideas from modern Southern cooks – they work wonders with lowly vegetables, and many simple cooking techniques and delicious, heart-healthy recipes can be found on the Internet for free.
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