In Carlene Thomas’ experience, two types of people ask her advice as a dietitian about the healthiest way to prepare vegetables.
Those looking to improve their diet are curious about how different cooking methods affect nutritional content. Others wonder how best to work more vegetables into their diet in general.
“A lot of people engage in aspirational vegetable shopping” without actually using them, says Thomas, who is from the US state of Virginia. In that case, “it doesn’t matter how you cook them, because if they’re going in the trash, they’re not in your body”.
That said, research shows different cooking methods do affect the nutritional content of produce, but they are not as simple as raw vs. steamed vs. roasted.
Are raw vegetables healthier than cooked?
Not always. Prolonged exposure to high heat degrades many nutrients. But cooking not only softens the cellular walls in vegetables, making them easier to digest, it also changes their structure to increase what is called bioavailability – the body’s ability to absorb the vegetables’ nutrients, Thomas says.
