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Hello and welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweek

segment called Ask a Nutritionist. My name is Leah Kleintrod. I'm a registered and licensed

dietitian with nutritional weight and wellness. And on today's show, I will be answering

a few related nutrition questions about one particular topic that we received from our

Dishing Up Nutrition listeners.

So this particular listener says, I recently read that cooking vegetables reduces or destroys

vitamin content by as much as 50%.

So this person asked, number one, is that true? And number two,

are the vitamins leached into the water? So this is true when boiling vegetables or does heat

of any kind denature the vitamins? So there would be vitamin loss, no matter the cooking method, whether

it's steaming, grilling, sauteing. So there's a couple of parts to this question.

These are really great questions. I love this. So to address that first question, is that accurate?

I would say yes, no, and it depends. So super specific answer. I know I'm sure people love that

answers, but we're going to dive into this a little deeper. The thing is when we cook foods,

there is a tradeoff. When we heat and cook food, yes, there is going to be some nutrient loss or nutrients that

are wasted no matter what, no matter the cooking method. But on the flip side, there are other

nutrients in food that are actually enhanced or they're made more available to the body when we cook our

food. Before I forget, too, let's not forget that when we cook our food, there is a safety

consideration also. So we lessen the risk of foodborne pathogens, making it into our body,

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