Does reheating food lose nutrients and minerals?

Sometimes to save time and effort, you often prepare food for your family and will reheat the food before serving. However, reheating food is thought to cause some nutrients in food to be lost. However, this is the only method to ensure food safety, because we cannot eat cold food, which has been preserved overnight.

This information is still somewhat controversial, but there are a few nutrients you should be aware of because they are very easily lost or changed with too much heat exposure. Learn about 3 nutrients that are at high risk of disappearing if you reheat food more than once.

Nutrients can be affected when you reheat food

Vitamin

Heat-sensitive vitamins like vitamin C lose their effectiveness when heated. In addition to vitamin C, other structurally unstable vitamins that are also susceptible to effects while reheating food are the B vitamins folate and thiamin. While water-soluble vitamins are more soluble in the water in which you cook them and are often destroyed at temperatures above 21 degrees Celsius, B vitamins, for example, become ineffective during heating and This vitamin is also water soluble.

You should be careful when reheating foods containing vitamin C

Enzyme

Reheating food can destroy many enzymes in whole grains, beans, and nuts. These enzymes play many important roles in the body including digestion. However, digesting raw grains is difficult, and your body loses most of its nutrients when only a portion of the grain is digested.

While your body produces metabolic enzymes, the food you eat replaces many of those nutrients so your body doesn’t get depleted. According to Dr. Lee Berenson, when you do not produce enough enzymes to fully digest food, free radicals increase the risk of entering the body and causing negative effects such as allergies, infections, …

Antioxidants

Antioxidants are inherent in some foods and are important for fighting free radicals in the body. Among them, lutein and zeaxanthin are two powerful xanthophylls antioxidants that are naturally found in green vegetables such as kale, broccoli and cabbage. In addition to vitamin A, lutein and zeaxanthin are important nutrients needed for healthy eyes.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, reheating foods that contain these nutrients reduces their effects. in spite of. Food is the most effective source of antioxidants from phytochemicals, but you can use supplements to replace nutrients lost from cooking. However, you should consult your doctor for guidance as some supplements can carry unwanted side effects.

Food that is reheated many times can cause nutrients to be lost

While you can lose some of the nutrients inherent in food when you cook and reheat food, you also reduce your risk of developing illnesses caused by raw or spoiled food. So how to reheat food while preserving as much quality as possible?

Reheat food in the microwave to preserve nutrients

Although a food’s mineral content is not affected by microwaving, the vitamin content is slightly affected when you reheat food, especially vitamin C and vitamin B. To understand why Well, we need to look at how microwaves work. Basically, the microwave has the ability to create water molecules that combine with the energy generated by the microwave and affect the water molecules in the food. The water molecules will essentially be heated, so the food will be heated in just a few seconds.

Some nutrients (especially vitamin C) will be broken down in any reheating process, so reheating in a high-speed microwave is really ideal. While ovens and stoves can reduce the percentage of nutrients more than microwave ovens due to the longer cooking time. “Vitamin C is more sensitive to heat than many other water-soluble vitamins and antioxidants, so you cannot avoid the risk of losing some vitamin C when you reheat food,” says Dr. Caroline Kaufman, Ph. .However, using a microwave oven is a great way to conserve nutrients that would otherwise leak into the cooking water or decompose when the food is overcooked.”

Using a microwave is the safest method to ensure that the nutrients in food are preserved

It can be said that reheating food is inevitable in modern life, so the loss of available nutrients in food is also a force majeure. What we can do is to limit as much as possible the amount of nutrients lost after heating food and the best method recommended by scientists is to use a microwave oven.

Besides, in order to maintain and improve better health every day, in addition to paying attention to nutrition, you should also focus on physical training. With the easyhealthylive.com application, you can not only connect with professional coaches, but also set up training schedules, exercises and nutrition advice suitable for your condition. With only 500,000 VND you can experience the basic package with 110 LEEP Coins in your account. Eat healthy and live healthy from today.

Reference source

Does Reheating Food Destroy Much of Its Nutritional Content? https://healthfully.com/505377-how-reheating-food-destroys-much-of-its-nutritional-content.html Accessed 20/05/2021

Does Reheating Leftovers Kill Vitamins? https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/doees-reheating-leftovers-kill-vitamins Accessed 20/05/2021