1. Wash before cutting
Cutting a vegetable breaks its cell walls, allowing nutrients to escape into any water on contact. By washing uncut vegetables, nutrients stay safely tucked inside their cell walls and won’t be leached into the water.
2. Cook soon after cutting
Nutrients can be destroyed when exposed to light and air. Cook and eat vegetables soon after cutting to keep vitamins and minerals secure in their cells as long as possible.
3. Cut larger, uniform pieces
Larger pieces mean fewer cell walls severed and fewer nutrients lost to heat, light, or cooking water. Cutting uniform pieces ensures that everything is done at the same time, eliminating overcooked pieces and loss of nutrients.
4. Keep the peel on
Many key nutrients are found in or just under the vegetable peel, so leave the peel on whenever possible.
5. Limit the water
When you cook vegetables in water, you lose nutrients. You know that green hue the water takes on after you’ve boiled or blanched your broccoli?
That’s a sign that vitamins like C and B have leached into the water, only to be poured down the drain.
To retain these vitamins, cook vegetables in as little water as possible for a minimal amount of time (unless you’re planning to consume the water, as in a soup).
Steaming and microwaving, both of which use little water, will give you the same results as boiling or blanching but with much less nutrient loss.
6. Use a little fat
Eating plain steamed vegetables may sound like the best way to go nutritionally, but you’re actually better off eating vegetables with some fat.
Many nutrients, like beta carotene, vitamin D, and vitamin K are fat soluble, so they can only pass from our intestine into our blood stream with some fat to carry them across.
So toss those steamed veggies with a flavorful vinaigrette, or sauté or stir-fry them—all of these methods use some fat (which helps maximize absorption) but little if any water (to minimize nutrient loss).
They’ll also make your vegetables tastier than plain steamed ones, so you’ll be inspired to eat more.
7. Add citrus
Vegetables like spinach, broccoli, and kale contain lots of iron, but it’s in a form that’s difficult for our bodies to use, so most of it passes through undigested.
Vitamin C, which citrus fruits provide in spades, reacts with iron chemically, changing it into a form that’s more easily absorbed by our bodies.
In other words, it makes the iron user-friendly. So go ahead and add a splash of lemon, lime, orange, or grapefruit juice to that stir-fry or sauté.
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