The worst way to cook vegetables is deep frying them!

Vegetables have loads of health benefits. They are good for the eyes, skin, heart, and bones. But these veggies should be cooked rightly.

Otherwise, their benefits would be lost. Which is the worst way to cook vegetables?

Vegetables and cooking

Vegetables including green leafy vegetables are rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. All of these are valuable for the body.

They assist in immune function and are good for gums, bones, skin, hair, eyes, heart, and other body organs. The antioxidants prevent chronic inflammation in the body and can keep chronic diseases at bay.

They can prevent certain cancers, heart diseases, diabetes, and hypertension.

Vegetables are of multiple types with different tastes. There is always some vegetable that a person will like to eat. They can be cooked in several ways.

One can boil them, grill them, roast them, stir fry them, or even eat them raw. The latter include carrots and cucumbers. One can make a smoothie of them and consume it.

Vegetable juices are also popular and include carrot juice, bitter gourd juice, beetroot juice, and the like. But the worst way of cooking them is in fried form.

The worst way to cook vegetables

People can relish vegetables in several forms. But the worst way to cook vegetables is to fry them. Dietitian Molly Hembree states:

“There are plenty of examples of ways you shouldn’t eat vegetables, including fried and smothered foods,”

Frying or smothering does not change the amount or quality of their nutrients. These remain intact. But what makes frying the worst way to cook them is the oil you are adding to the food while frying. Further, Molly elaborates on this aspect:

“It’s not necessarily that nutrient composition changes when you cook vegetables a certain way,”

“It’s just that people might think they are ‘getting in their vegetables’ when in fact it is a very small serving. And, at the expense of a lot of added oils, sodium, sugars, or refined grains, etc.”

Sugars and sodium might also go in high amounts during frying. For instance, 85 grams of fried or battered broccoli gives 279 mg of sodium.

Fried foods and health

Fried foods are not good for health. This includes fried vegetables.

British medical journal carried out an article a few years back in 2019 that showed that fried foods increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality in women in the USA.

There was another original research paper published in Nutrients journal in 2015.

It revealed that fried foods consumption four 4 or more times per week leads to a higher risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. In 2021, Heart journal had an article that showed that fried foods increase the risk of stroke and heart ailments.

Read more: Green leafy vegetables and arugula and renal health!

Try healthy ways to make food tasty without frying. Molly adds:

“Broccoli with a little bit (tablespoon or two) of cheese, for example, is totally fine,”

“But small pieces of vegetables in tons of fried breading is very different.”