Cooking Carrots for Cancer Fighting Power
Find out how cooking carrots can help fight cancer
No vegetable is more commonly cooked for health than the carrot, but how carrots
are cooked and served has tremendous impact on their nutritional benefit.
The news services recently reported that chopping carrots before boiling them reduces
their content of the cancer-fighting compound falcarinol. Chopped carrots have greater
surface area than carrots cooked whole after a light peeling. More of this water-soluble
ingredient leaches out in boiling water the more the carrots are chopped.
Most of the important eye and heart nutrients in carrots, however, are soluble in
fat, not water, and they are more available from cooked carrots than from raw carrots
or carrot juice. The antioxidant beta-carotene in carrots is formed in tough, protein-encased
sacs in the body of the carrot. These little packages of beta-carotene have to be
broken up by heat and mechanical action before the beta-carotene is released. Moreover,
they are 10-times better absorbed when the carrots are cooked with some form of
oil or fat, whether it is vegetable oil, margarine, or butter.
So what is the healthy way to serve carrots?
Carrot sticks are crunchy and carrot juice is tasty, but cooked carrots have greater
available nutrition than either raw carrots or carrot juice. To save their water-soluble
falcarinol, cook your carrots as nearly whole as possible. But to make sure the
beta-carotene is available, chop, mash, or puree them after cooking and serve with
just a little fat. As little as 3 grams (30 calories) from fat in the entire meal
is enough to ensure that your body can absorb all the cancer-fighting and eye- and
heart-protective nutrients of this versatile food.
Written by: Robert Rister
Posted: July 31, 2009