We all know from childhood about the benefits of vegetable products. The more vegetables are included in a person’s diet, the slimmer, more vigorous, healthier, more fun he is. But not everyone knows how to cook them so that they protect their beneficial properties. So, what are the secrets of the correct preparation of vegetable products?
What are the benefits of vegetables?
First of all, vegetables contain a lot of fiber, vitamins, organic acids and minerals. Fiber provides our body with saturation, but is not digested by it. It is a building material for the membranes of plant cells. And minerals and vitamins are contained directly in the cells. They are low-molecular compounds of various chemical nature, while vitamins are organic compounds, and minerals are inorganic. All of them are absolutely necessary for our body to function normally.

The composition of vegetable products also includes phytocompounds. These valuable substances include carotenoids, indoles, isothiocyanates. In large quantities they contain cruciferous, that is, all types of cabbage, turnips, horseradish, mustard seeds, as well as red vegetables with the exception of beets.
• Carotenoids are found predominantly in brightly colored vegetables. Actually, the color is given to them by lycopene and beta-carotene, which is transformed into vitamin A in the human body. Carotenoids and isothiocyanates are strong antioxidants, that is, substances that fight oxidative processes that are harmful to us, keep our cells intact, promote their renewal and prevent diseases of the cardiovascular system, cancer, arthritis.
• Isothiocyanates help the liver produce enzymes that deactivate carcinogens and toxins and remove them from the body. This is important, since carcinogens are provocateurs of cancer.
• Indoles are different phytoestrogenic action, normalize our hormonal balance.
All these phytocompounds play an important role in deciding the issue of cooking vegetable products.

Cook or eat raw?
So, it is generally accepted that raw vegetables are healthier than thermally processed ones. However, this issue is debatable. It turns out that many boiled and stewed vegetables are much healthier than their raw counterparts.
In fact, after heat treatment, some of the beneficial properties of vegetables are lost. For example, vitamin C is destroyed, an indispensable assistant to immunity and a builder of vascular walls, as well as phytoncides that are important for our body. In addition, vegetable products lose their texture, taste and aroma. However, these losses can be minimized if you know how to cook vegetables.

Proper preparation of these foods helps increase the absorption of other nutrients such as beta-carotene. We get 5 times more of this substance from boiled carrots than from fresh ones. The same thing happens with the valuable carotenoid lutein, in boiled carrots it is 14% more. It is no coincidence that young children are recommended to give baked carrots and an apple, since raw carrots contain a lot of fiber that burdens the gastrointestinal tract, and fresh apples have a lot of pectin, which is too heavy for a child’s pancreas.

The same can be said about potassium, which is necessary for protein synthesis and carbohydrate metabolism. Proper cooking of potatoes, eggplant, zucchini – grilling, and together with the peel. This treatment helps to increase the concentration of potassium.
There is evidence that calcium, which is involved in the formation of our skeleton, may be poorly absorbed due to the fact that, under adverse environmental conditions, vegetables grown in garden beds begin to accumulate strontium, which interferes with the absorption of calcium. During heat treatment, the concentration of strontium decreases, which means that proper preparation helps to improve the absorption of calcium. Therefore, onions, turnips, carrots can be safely baked, and cabbage can be stewed.

The carotenoid lycopene is superior in its activity to other antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E. It maintains the tone of our blood vessels and helps reduce the risk of cancer. But a person can get more lycopene by eating vegetables cooked over a fire. This is especially true for tomatoes. Namely, this vegetable we most often eat raw. Meanwhile, according to research by American scientists, in stewed or boiled tomatoes, the amount of lycopene increases by a third after two minutes of heat treatment. And if vegetables are boiled or stewed for 15 minutes, then the content of lycopene increases by 1.5 times. It turns out that tomato juice, which is squeezed with steam, is more beneficial than fresh tomatoes.
Now let’s focus on others. phytocompounds, the amount of which increases after stewing, boiling or baking. These include glycosylates. These complex organic compounds contain isothiocyanates useful for humans, which we have already mentioned. The content of these compounds in steamed cauliflower or broccoli is up to 30% higher than in fresh vegetables. Moreover, if broccoli and cauliflower are boiled or fried, the number of isothiocyanates, on the contrary, is reduced by 80%.

Finally, one cannot but recall vitamin C and dispel the myth that it is destroyed as a result of heat treatment of vegetables. The fact is that during steam processing, boiling or stewing, for example, carrots, only a small amount of this vitamin is lost, since the heating temperature is much lower than during frying. In boiled zucchini, the amount of vitamin C does not decrease, and in boiled carrots it decreases by a quarter. To preserve the vitamin in the potato, it is good to bake this root crop in the peel, since vitamin C is concentrated just under the peel. At the same time, you should know that this applies only to young potatoes; there is practically no vitamin left in old root crops.