The most harmful cooking methods
This is the traditional frying of food in fat or oil and deep fat cooking. They require a lot of oil, which saturates the food and adds a lot of extra calories to it. In addition, oil at high temperatures (and especially reused) releases toxins that increase the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and oncological diseases. Worse, this happens to the oil even when the fried food is reheated.
Plus, this method of cooking produces trans fats, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Fried food also negatively affects the general condition of the gastrointestinal tract: it is absorbed very slowly, it takes about 5-6 hours to digest, while other food is digested in 2-3 hours. And because of the abundance of fat and salt in fried foods, you feel hungry faster.
Cooking or not: which is better
If the need to cook meat or fish is usually questioned by few, apart from convinced raw foodists, then when it comes to vegetables, many have questions.
In an effort to get the most out of vegetables, some people try to eat as much of them as possible and only raw. Indeed, as we already wrote, the longer vegetables are cooked, the more nutrients they lose. But cooking isn’t always bad.
This is because cooking destroys the cell walls of vegetables and makes it easier for the body to absorb many nutrients. Thus, cooked vegetables increase the bioavailability of vitamin A, calcium, iron and the antioxidant lycopene. This applies, for example, to carrots and broccoli, and also partially to tomatoes: when cooked from them, the antioxidant lycopene is better absorbed, but vitamin C is lost.
In addition, many cooked vegetables shrink dramatically, and you eat much more than if you ate them raw. Thus, you will get more nutrients, even taking into account their losses during cooking. This is especially noticeable on a serving of spinach.
In addition, an abundance of insoluble fiber often leads to bloating and indigestion.
So the best thing is the variety, both of the products and the ways of using them.