What Are The Health Benefits Of Eating Cooked Vegetables?

The debate over whether cooked or raw vegetables are more nutritious has gone on for years, and there's still no definitive winner. One thing is clear: Eating veggies of any kind has the power to boost your immune system and will provide your body with essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Immunity

MyPyramid.gov reports that vegetables and fruits, whether cooked or raw, can help cut risks of heart disease, high cholesterol, stroke and cancer, among other serious health conditions. Veggies are able to boost your immune system because they contain healthy fiber, a myriad of vitamins, essential minerals and antioxidants, which are natural disease-fighting compounds.

Nutrient Absorption

It's true that vegetables lose vitamins and minerals as they're cooked, but the cooking process may help you more successfully absorb the nutrients that do remain in some veggies. For example, The Cancer Project reports that by cooking and pureeing carrots, you can potentially triple the amount of antioxidants that your body is able to absorb from the vegetables. The same goes for sweet potatoes and tomatoes.

Freshness

A common misconception is that the vegetables you can buy in the produce section at your local grocery store are always fresher and more nutritious than those that are precooked and canned or frozen. However, that may not be the case. According to Brown University, veggies that are canned or frozen contain "many more" phytonutrients than fresh vegetables because they've been picked and preserved at the height of their ripeness. Plus, all you need to do is heat them up, so they'll lose very few nutrients in the cooking process.

Tips

Your veggies may end up with varying nutritional profiles depending on how you decide to cook them. For example, deep-frying zucchini may not effectively preserve nutrients, but steaming or grilling it takes less time and is healthier. The University of South Carolina cites baking, braising, grilling, broiling, steaming, sauteing, stir-frying and roasting as some of the healthiest cooking techniques for vegetables. "The New York Times" nutrition writer Harold McGee notes that microwaving veggies is a great choice because it's a quick-cooking method that cuts down the amount of time enzymes have to destroy nutrients.

Considerations

Although cooking does more effectively release nutrients in certain vegetables, eating a mixture of raw and cooked vegetables may prove to be the most healthful choice. According to a 2004 study from Columbia University researchers, both cooked and raw vegetable consumption have an inverse relationship to cancer development, but raw vegetables have the slight edge in prevention power. Still, eating vegetables of any sort is most important. "It doesn't matter whether they're frozen, raw, mashed or whatever," says nutritionist Sarah Schenker in an article for BBC News. "It is far more important that [you] eat a variety."