5 Practices That Help Retain Nutrients In The Food

Food doesn't just mean filling your stomach or giving you a taste through your diet; it meets your body's nutritional needs. Keeping this in mind, we all buy nutritious vegetables from the market and cook them with love. But have you ever wondered whether the vegetable you are cooking is healthy or not? If your preparation method is incorrect, you do not get the full benefit of eating that vegetable. However, maintaining dietary nutrients is not that difficult. You have to take care of some little things. So let's understand them.

1. Wash vegetables properly: The first and most important rule to preserve the nutrients while cooking is to wash the vegetables thoroughly before chopping them. Cutting vegetables first and washing them later strips away many essential nutrients from the food. 
2. Peeling vegetables: After washing the vegetables, it is time to peel them. There is a way, and that is, you should peel them very thinly. This is because the nutrients in vegetables and fruits lie right under the skin. What's more? Peeling vegetables before boiling strips them of vitamin C, folic acid, and other vitamins. Instead of peeling carrots, radishes, gourds and ginger, you can always scrape them. Peel them only when necessary. 
3. Don't soak for a long time: Some people soak their vegetables in water for hours. But in reality, neither the vegetable should not be cut and kept nor should they be soaked in water for a long time. Do you know that if you soak vegetables in water for a long time, about 40 per cent of their soluble vitamins and minerals are lost? So while you can soak them for a short while, post which you can use the remaining water as a vegetable stock for kneading dough, making soups and preparing gravy as well. 
4. How to boil vegetables? If you boil root vegetables like potatoes or carrots, you should wash them thoroughly and cook them without peeling. Then after boiling, it should be peeled because this will transfer the nutrients present in its skin to the vegetable. And you'll be able to absorb all the nutrients of the vegetable easily. 
5. Chopping veggies: If you are chopping the veggies into tiny pieces, you are making a mistake. Small bites of vegetables increase their surface area and destroy their nutrients by coming in contact with excessive oxygen.