Health And Wellness Center: How to preserve vitamins in food

How to preserve vitamins in food - When writing the article on the importance of consumption of vitamin B to combat fatigue and low moods, I felt it necessary to write another about vitamins. They are very important for our health is well known, but perhaps not if the food we buy contain or how they should be altered to cook foods that contain them.

I start with the definition of the term SAR vitamin: From lat. vita, life, and amine chemical term coined by the Polish biochemist C. Funk, 1884-1967. Associate vitamins vitality to life. Our body needs vitamins, in small proportions, to perfectly develop different processes, as these are involved in many biochemical functions of our cells.

Vitamins during cooking

When we cook foods, nutrients (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.) are destroyed, altered and lost. The degree of destruction, alteration or loss depend on the temperature, the method and cooking time.

The highest losses occur to cook food at low temperatures for a long time. This loss is less if the cooking is done in reverse: high temperature for a short time.

Already today there are many houses that use the pressure cooker or quick cooking, especially to save time, but the loss of nutrients such as vitamins and minerals is a compelling reason (and health) to use it.

In search of the lost vitamin

And although in our society food is plentiful, there are many people who have vitamin deficiencies for several reasons:

Little or no consumption of fruits and vegetables,
Refined foods stripped of many nutrients that provide comprehensive or complete,
Lack of vitamins from production: often the food reaching the market, especially fruits and vegetables, are already devoid of many of the vitamins and nutrients they are own by nature, due to the type of crop they undergo and the impoverishment of the soil in which they are grown, motivated this by the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides,
Food preservation after collected by the use of additives and other chemicals that can alter or minimize the effect of its nutrients.

That is why we consider it necessary to supply food with a good multivitamin, unless you have in your house an organic garden and you can grow your fruits and vegetables with absolute guarantee of "purity".

How to avoid losing vitamins

Although many food reaches our kitchen with less nutrients and vitamins than they should, there are ways to minimize the loss of those arriving. Here are some:

Eating raw fruits and vegetables instead of cooked, within the logical,
Wash them and prepare them with minimal water,
Cook steamed vegetables,
if cook, preserve and use the cooking water for soups, for example, because it is here where the vitamins,
Reduce the cooking time to a minimum,
Avoid keeping food warm for a long time,
Not reheat food again and again, it causes loss of vitamins,
Buy the freshest avoiding that take longer stored on trade,
Frozen products retain vitamins better than canned products,
Roast or barbecued also better retain their vitamins,
In the case of milk, it is desirable to protect from light to prevent loss of nutrients.