Reader Yelena writes:
I’m hoping you can explain soups to me. I thought that vegetables lose their vitamins when they are heated, so why is soup considered healthy?
First of all, not all soup is considered healthy. For taste and health, I stick to soups that are brothy and chock full of veggies. Cream-based soups are certainly not a picture of nutrition.
Do vegetables lose their nutrients when heated? Well, it depends. According to this article:
For some vegetables, heat processing actually boosts antioxidant levels. A study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry in September of 2000 reported that pureed, heat-processed carrots had 34.3 percent higher antioxidant levels than their raw counterparts. But for other veggies, no matter how you cook them - whether you microwave, boil or steam - you’re likely to lose some of the nutrients. A study published in the November 2003 issue of the Journal of Science of Food and Agriculture found that broccoli cooked in the microwave lost up to 97 percent of its antioxidant content. However, in this study, the researchers used 10 tablespoons of water for cooking the broccoli. When the Spanish researchers tested broccoli after steaming, they found that it had lost only 11 percent of its antioxidant content. You don’t have to use a lot of water when cooking vegetables in the microwave - a couple tablespoons will do and you don’t have to add any water when microwaving frozen vegetables.
That answers our question in terms of microwaving veggies, but what about cooking them in broth/water for soup? As long as you cook the vegetables in the broth that you’ll later consume, you’ll actually be getting all the nutrients that may have leached out into the liquid. If you’re cooking veggies separately, use the following guidelines:
- Use fresh or frozen veggies whenever possible.
- Cook veggies soon after buying them.
- Wash veggies rather than soaking.
- Cook veggies with as little water as possible (I knew there was a good reason to roast EVERYTHING!).
The bottom line here is that vegetables are healthy and if some nutrients are lost in the cooking process, that doesn’t suddenly make them not worth eating! Here are some healthy soup recipes you can try out:
