VEGETABLES are healthy foods. But wrong dining concepts and cooking habits could either spoil the foods or damage the beneficial elements in them. Do you know what these wrong habits are?

1. Eating vegetables that are not fresh

Vegetables will lose many vitamins after being stored for a long time. For example, spinach will lose 84 percent of its vitamin C if stored at 20 degrees Celsius for 24 hours.

2. Discarding nutritious parts

When making dumplings with vegetable stuffing, some people like to squeeze away the vegetable juice, fearing the juice may leak. However, the vegetables will thus lose more than 70 percent of their vitamins.

3. Cooking vegetables with slow fire

Research shows vegetables will lose 17 percent of their vitamin C if they are cooked with quick fire while the loss will reach 59 percent if the vegetables are cooked with slow fire.

4. Eating double-cooked vegetables

Some people like to have the dishes cooked before hand and reheat them prior to eating. However, research shows that cooked Chinese cabbage will lose 20 percent of its vitamin C during the cooking process. Another 10 percent of it will be lost if kept for over 30 minutes. And the loss could reach a 30 percent of its total vitamin C if the storage time lasts for one hour. Finally, the reheating process will cause another 20 percent loss of vitamin C. By counting the numbers we know that there won't be many vitamins left after the whole process.

5. Throwing away soup

Most of the vitamins in vegetables will dissolve in the soup in the process of cooking. For example, when fresh peas are boiled for three minutes, 50 percent of their vitamin C will dissolve in the water.

6. Washing vegetables after shredding them

A large amount of vitamins will be washed away if vegetables are washed after being shredded.

7. Eating too many fried dishes

Studies show vegetables absorb more oil than meat does in the process of cooking, because meat cells are separated by water while vegetable cells are separated by air. A dish of fried vegetables may contain more fat than a dish of fried fish.

8. Eating only vegetables

Vegetarians may suffer from lack of cholesterin, proteins, lactoflavin and zinc if they eat only vegetables for a long time.

 
Editor: Wings