Why Your Cooking Method is Important to Your Health

You might not realize that the way you cook can make even healthy foods become unhealthy. Even when you choose lean proteins and vegetables for your meals, the way in which you cook them is as important as what you are cooking when it comes to their nutritional value.

If you prepare chicken for dinner, you have to be aware of the best ways to cook your chicken, as many people unknowingly have bad habits when it comes to preparing this supposedly ‘healthy’ white meat. When you cook chicken (or any other meat for that matter), you should bake, grill, or broil your meats rather than frying them. Fried chicken, even though it’s chicken, is going to be far less healthy than a baked or grilled chicken breast, as the meat will absorb a great deal of the oil that you cook it in. If you cook it dry in a pan (trying to be healthy by not using oil or butter), the flesh will char, and charred meat contains carcinogens which contribute to cancer. Those ‘burned bits’ that you love and that makes the meat look cooked are actually chock-full of of cancer-causing oxidized chemicals! This will hold true for many of the other meals you make. Consider using low fat substitutes in your meals if you must pan fry, such as PAM spray or olive oil.

One of the other things that people often do when they cook dinner is use canned vegetables because they believe that they are easier and cook faster. While this may be true, they have far less nutritional value. Storing veggies in water quickly leaches the nutrients out through the skin, and you pour away all the goodness with that salty (and inedible) storage water. If you don’t have time to cut, prepare and cook fresh veggies every day, you can still buy bags of frozen vegetables to cook. Bagged (dry) is always better than canned, and are usually much cheaper. Just look in your local store’s freezer section in the veggie aisle. They prepare quickly and are easy to cook, yet you still get more nutritional value.

You can even make the desserts you offer healthier by considering the ingredients you choose and the way that you cook them. Consider adding less sugar when you make dessert, or start preparing sugar free desserts. Even a nice piece of fruit can make a great dessert, such as a peach or handful of blueberries and raspberries sliced and sprinkled over fruit sorbet. Try serving fruit sorbet in coconut shells if you have kids, they’ll love this tropical treat and won’t notice they’re eating fruit for desert instead of ice-cream! All you need is a little imagination.