Is it true that overheating food

Heating food is practical. Especially if you don't have much time to cook every time you want to eat. However, habits like this can actually reduce nutrient levels in food. How many nutrients are lost because you like to warm food? Are there certain types of food that you shouldn't heat up at all? Check out the answer below.

Why does heating food reduce its nutritional content?

Cooking with the right technique is very necessary in order to kill bacteria, prevent you from the risk of infectious diseases, and make food digestible. However, it turns out that the wrong cooking process (the temperature is too high or the process takes too long) and the habit of heating food repeatedly can reduce the levels of nutrients contained in it.

One of the important nutrients that will be wasted is vitamin C. In fact, vitamin C has a very important role in the health of the body, such as helping to prevent anemia, helping to protect hearing function, and other unique abilities.

Reheating many times or even cooking too long apparently can reduce 50-80 percent of the vitamin C content in food. For example, when you cook spinach for 5 minutes, as much as 11 percent of the vitamin C content will be lost. Cooking it for 30 minutes means that 60 percent of the vitamin C content will be lost.

Therefore, when the spinach is cooked, then you heat it again for a few minutes, the more the vitamin C content will be lost.

Another example is carrots. When you cook for 5 minutes, the vitamin C content in carrots will be lost as much as 16 percent. If carrots are heated or cooked for a total of 30 minutes, as much as 50 percent of the vitamin C will be lost.

Apart from the vitamin content, the enzyme content in foods such as nuts will also decrease. This enzyme plays a role in maintaining the health of your digestive system. Heating food that is done repeatedly can also reduce the antioxidant content found in food. In fact, antioxidants function to ward off free radicals, prevent aging, and have a good impact on skin health.

Other nutrients such as folic acid will also decrease in foods that undergo repeated cooking and heating processes. Research conducted on potatoes that have been baked, cooled, then heated has decreased levels of folic acid from 100 percent to 86 percent. Though folic acid plays a very important role in brain development (especially in pregnant women).

Also pay attention to how you heat the food

Based on deep researchJournal of Food Science and Technology, cooking or heating the anchovies by frying will further cause nutrient loss. In addition, the fat content in foods processed by frying is actually higher when compared to foods processed by steaming or grilling techniques.

So, if you fry the side dishes many times to keep them warm before eating, the nutrients will decrease and the fat content will actually increase.

How to retain nutrients when heating food

This does not mean that you are completely prohibited from heating food. You can still do it, but you should pay attention to the following tips so that not many nutrients are lost from food.

Only heat food for short periods of time, not too long.
Don't add too much water when heating food. This is important to prevent more nutrients "out" and move into the water or broth. Unless you are going to finish all the broth.
Do not overheat food.