Posts Tagged ‘fresh foods’

Vitamin C Helps You to Fight Cancer, Part III

Handle with Care

If you are nutrition-minded, you probably try not to lose nutrients in cooking.

With vitamin A, you don’t have to worry. It is tough stuff; pretty much indifferent to water, heat, and even long periods of storage. Vitamin A doesn’t dissolve in water, so it doesn’t leach into water used in cooking.

But vitamin C is very sensitive. Heat, light, and oxygen can do it in. In fact, some loss of the vitamin C in food just cannot be prevented.

With a little effort, though, losses of the vitamin can be kept to a minimum. Here are the rules:

1. The sooner fresh foods can be used, the better. Vitamin C breaks down during storage.
2. Try not to chop these foods finely all the time. The fewer pieces a food is cut into, the lower its exposure to oxygen, which destroys vitamin C.
3. The vitamin C in cabbage, cantaloupe, squashes, and strawberries is especially unstable. The sooner they are eaten after cutting, the better.

Read more…