Archive for the ‘Nutrients’ Category:
Keeping Vitamin Values Intact
Keeping Vitamin Values Intact
Many vitamins are readily destroyed or lost when foods are preserved, stored, and cooked. With the current emphasis on highly refined and precooked convenience foods and the great distances fresh foods must travel before they reach the consumer’s table, the modern American diet may shortchange some people.
Much of the following advice on how to get the most vitamins for your food dollar is derived from research cited in Nutritional Evaluation of Food Processing.
- Eat whole grain rather than refined breads and cereals and brown rice instead of white. Enriched breads, pasta, cereals, and rice are second best. Parboiled or converted rice has more vitamins than polished rice.
- Use fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables instead of canned ones. During canning, the amount of many vitamins is reduced by half or more, and further losses occur during storage of the canned goods. Freezing, followed by storage and cooking, also reduces the vitamin content, but much less than does canning. Boil-in-the-bag frozen foods are preferred for their vitamin content. Don’t thaw frozen vegetables before cooking.
Micronutrients: Essential in Tiny Amounts
Micronutrients: Essential in Tiny Amounts
Throughout most of evolution, food was our only source of vitamins and minerals. Today, however, the “one-a-day” multivitamin-mineral tablet is a kind of nutritional insurance policy for millions of Americans, whether they need it or not. In recent years it has been eclipsed by megadose formulations of individual micro nutrients supposedly capable of performing health miracles far beyond warding off the well-known deficiency diseases.
The Lift Sustaining Vitamins
Even as millions down a veritable alphabet soup’s worth of vitamin supplements each day, confusion and controversy surround these nutrients. There’s only one fact about which there is no argument: Vitamins are essential to good health. But which ones, for whom, and how much?