Getting the Most Vitamins from Your Food

Eating the right foods doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting the vitamins they contain. Food processing, storing, and cooking can easily undermine the best nutritious intentions. To get the most from what you eat (not to mention what you spend) keep the following tips in mind.

• Wash but don't soak fresh vegetables if you hope to benefit from the B and C vitamins and they contain.
• Forgo convenience and make your salads when you're ready to eat them. Fruits and vegetables cut up and left to stand lose vitamins.
• Use a sharp knife when cutting or shredding fresh vegetables, because vitamins A and C are diminished when vegetable tissues are bruised.
• If you don't plan to eat your fresh fruit or vegetables for a few days, you're better off buying flash-frozen ones. The vitamin content of good frozen green beans will be higher than those fresh ones you've kept in your refrigerator for a week.
• Store frozen meat at 0 degrees F or lower immediately after purchase to prevent loss of quality and bacterial growth.
• Outer green leaves of letture, though coarser than inner ones, have higher calcium, iron, and vitamin A content. Don't thaw your frozen vegetables before cooking. Broccoli leaves have a higher vitamin A value than the flower buds or stalks.
• There are more vitamins in converted and parboiled rice than in polished rice, and brown rice is more nutritious than white.
• Frozen foods that you can boil in their bags offer more vitamins than the ordinary kind, and all frozen foods are preferable to canned ones.
• Cooking in copper pots can destroy vitamin C, folic acid, and vitamin E.
• Stainless steel, glass, and enamel are the best utensils for retaining nutrients while cooking. (Iron pots can give you the benefit of that mineral, but they will shortchange you on Vitamin C.)
• The shortest cooking time and the smallest amount of water are the least destructive to nutrients.
• Milk in glass containers can lose riboflavin, as well vitamins A and D, unless kept out of the light. (Breads exposed to light can also lose these nutrients.)
• Well-browned, crusty, or toasted baked goods have less thiamine than others.
• Bake and boil potatoes in their skins to get the most vitamins from them.
• Use cooking water from vegetables to make soups, juices from meats for gravies, and syrups from canned fruits to make desserts.
• Refrain from using any baking soda when cooking vegetables if you want to benefit from their thiamine and vitamin C.
• Store vegetables and fruits in the refrigerator as soon as you bring them home from the market.

Source: Earl Mindell, Hester Mundis. Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible. (New York, NY: Warner Books) 1985.