Are you "killing" the nutrients in your food? InstantPots, microwaves, and leftovers…and my only cardinal rule

Nutrition Diva

Macmillan Holdings, LLC

Nutrition, Arts, Education, Health & Fitness, Food

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does your food lose its nutritional value as soon as it hits the heat? This week on Nutrition Diva, Monica answers a listener's question about how different cooking methods—specifically the Instant Pot versus the stovetop—impact the vitamins and minerals in your meals.

We look into the science of nutrient retention, debunking "urban legends" about microwaving, and explaining why frozen vegetables might actually be more nutritious than the "fresh" ones sitting on your counter.

The "New Car" Analogy: Does nutrient value drop immediately, or is it a gradual decline?
Pressure Cooking vs. Boiling: Why the Instant Pot often beats the stove for preserving fragile vitamins.
The Leftover Equation: How many nutrients are actually left in your 3-day-old chili?
The Cardinal Rule: The one thing you should never do when reheating food (hint: it’s not about the nutrients, it's about microplastics).
The Kale Chip Lesson: Why the "most nutritious" way to cook is the one that actually gets eaten.

Related Episodes:

Episode #654: Is Raw Food Better Than Cooked?
Episode #592: Are Frozen Vegetables Healthy?

If you’re listening on Spotify, check the poll: Do you prefer your veggies raw, roasted, or steamed?

New to Nutrition Diva? Check out our special Spotify playlist for a collection of the best episodes curated by our team and Monica herself!

We've also curated some great playlists on specific episode topics including Staying Strong as We Age, Diabetes, Weight Loss That Lasts and Gut Health! Also, find a playlist of our bone health series, Stronger Bones at Every Age.

Have a nutrition question? Send an email to nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A listener recently wrote to ask whether leftovers are significantly less nutritious than the
0:05.4	original meal.
0:06.9	It's a perfectly reasonable question, and there is lots to say about how cooking affects
0:12.6	nutrition, but it also illustrates how easy it would be to slide into counterproductive
0:18.7	perfectionism.
0:19.7	So today, I'm going to try to balance the science
0:22.2	with some pragmatism.
0:29.9	Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you are listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where we take
0:35.5	a closer look at nutrition news, research, and
0:38.1	trends, and answer your food and nutrition questions. Today's episode was inspired by an email
0:44.0	from Tom, who wrote, I have a question about how cooking affects nutrients. If I use an instant
0:51.3	pot, instead of cooking it on the stove, is there any real difference
0:55.6	in how much nutrition is retained? And if I make enough for leftovers, do the nutrients drop
1:01.4	off a lot after the second or the third day? Or is it more of a gradual change? Is this like
1:07.4	driving a new car off the lot where the value immediately drops, or is it not that
1:12.5	dramatic?
1:14.1	Okay, first off, as someone who enjoys a good analogy, I have to applaud Tom for the brilliant
1:20.2	driving the new car off the lot formulation.
1:24.7	And now to tackle this age-old question, this is one I have been getting in one form or another
1:29.9	since the earliest days of this now ancient podcast.
1:35.4	And there are a lot of pieces to this.
1:37.1	So let's take them one by one.
	...

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