Steam your veggies instead!
We all know that we should eat more vegetables. And we all try to stick to that. But did you know that the way you cook your vegetables also influences how good they actually are for you? Find out why you shouldn’t boil your vegetables when you make dinner.
Steam your vegetables
According to the experts, it is better to steam your vegetables instead of boiling them. Michelle Dudash, registered dietitian and chef, told Runner’s World: “Steaming softens vegetables, making chewing easier, and can make some vegetables easier to digest—like broccoli and cabbage. Steaming vegetables adds moisture, too, making the vegetables juicier.” But it isn’t just beneficial for the flavor and texture of the vegetables. Your veggies are better for you when you don’t boil them but steam them instead.
Benefits of steaming
When you boil your vegetables, you’re actually losing important nutrients in the proces. Dudash told Runner’s World: “… boiling involves submerging the vegetables completely underwater, therefore causing some nutrients—like vitamin C and B vitamins, as well as antioxidants—to leach out into the water, steaming helps retain more of these nutrients.” And that means that when you steam your vegetables, you get more of the nutritional benefits because your food isn’t submerged in water. The exception to this rule is when you prepare soup. Because with soup, you’re actually consuming the water that the vitamins and nutrients leak into.
This does not mean that you’ve been wasting your vegetables all these years. There are major benefits to eating vegetables – either steamed or boiled. But if you want to up your nutritional game, you might want to steam your vegetables in the future. Just to make sure you get all the health benefits!
Read more: Here are 5 vegetables you need to cook before you eat them
Source: Runner’s World | Image: Unsplash, Scurtu Corina