If you cook veggies in one pot, HOW do they lose nutrients?!
If you cook veggies in one pot, HOW do they lose nutrients?
I mean, where do the nutrients and vitamins go if you never drain the pot? Do they dissipate into thin air?
Answers: Well, the nutrients don't leave the pot, as you say - but the heat-sensitive ones are lost to heat, meaning that heat causes them to either break down or to change molecular configuration, which renders them, in either case, unusable to the body. Others, such as some water-soluble vitamins, dissolve in the water and are "lost" when you pour the water out.
So basicallym, it's better to eat vegiies raw. Some, however, like tomatoes, yield a special chemical called lycopene ONLY when they are cooked: that doesn't mean that other nutrient aren't lost during the cooking phase, but only that heat from cooking causes lycopene to be formed from precursor chemicals found in the tomatoes. Lycopene is thought to prevent cancer.