Save Your Vitamin C in Vegetables
Written by Rui Yun
Edited by Michelle Wong
Jan 31, 2021
Edited by Michelle Wong
Jan 31, 2021
When you cook your peppers or pumpkins for a longer time to enhance their flavor, you may be losing about sixty percent of the vitamin C in these vegetables. Why do we need to care about the loss of vitamin C in vegetables? The following will tell you how and why you need to save your vitamin C.
Vegetables are good sources of vitamins, minerals and fiber that are essential for us to maintain adequate health. Vitamin C is our good friend because it helps us to heal wounds, promote healthy skin and defend against bacteria and viral infections (Igwemmar, Kolawole, & Imran, 2013). For example, vitamin C aids in the biosynthesis of collagen, an important component of connective tissue essential for wound healing (“Vitamin C”, 2020). What’s more, vitamin C helps us increase the bioavailability of nonheme iron in vegetables like spinach (2020). Bioavailability is the amount of a nutrient that is able to be absorbed by our body. For example, our body can take in about 90% of the carbohydrates we eat, while the rest cannot be absorbed and ends up in our stool (169 Applegate). The bioavailability of iron, which is a very important mineral used to carry oxygen (179 Applegate), is about 5% in spinach. Vitamin C is able to improve the absorption of iron to decrease iron deficiency, which is “the most common nutrient deficiency worldwide.” (179)
However, vitamin C is incompatible with excessive heating time. In Igwemmar, Kolawole and Imran’s research, they tested the effects of various heating times on the amount of vitamin C lost. They found as heating time increases, the percentage loss in vitamin C increases. The researchers concluded that vegetables like peppers and spinach should not be cooked with excessive amounts of water and heat.
It is interesting to think that although we plan to eat healthily by eating vitamin C-rich vegetables, their essential nutrients are destroyed when we cook them carelessly. Regardless of whether you are a good cook or not, we need to be more aware that when we are cooking, we need to weigh more on the nutrients than the taste.
Works Cited
APPLEGATE, E. A. (2017). Nutrition basics for better health and performance. Place of publication not identified: KENDALL HUNT.
Igwemmar, Kolawole, & Imran. (2013). Effect Of Heating On Vitamin C Content Of Some Selected Vegetables. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, 2(11), 2277-8616, 209-212.
Office of Dietary Supplements - Vitamin C. (2020, February). Retrieved November 15, 2020, from https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminC-HealthProfessional/