Food trivia: Did you eat broccoli right?

Broccoli is a common vegetable on the table of every household, and it is also a kind of food beneficial to human health. The common method of cooking broccoli is boiling, but this method will cause the loss of a large amount of water-soluble vitamins, so it is not unfavorable for nutritionists.

However, a recent study found that the method of boiling not only causes the loss of vitamins, but also causes more serious loss of nutrients. Studies have found that the way of cooking in water can affect the body’s absorption of a class of compounds called “glucosinolates” in broccoli. The compound can reduce the risk of lung cancer and rectal cancer.

In 2011, researchers compared the levels of anti-cancer glucosinolates in two groups of different groups of people (eating broccoli or consuming nutrients purified from broccoli). They found that broccoli contains a special kind of protein, which can help the body break down “glucosinolates” for easy absorption; this protein is not present in the purified nutrients.

Specifically, the blood and urine levels of “glucosinolates” in people who consume broccoli are eight times that of another group.

In addition, the lead researcher of the subject believes that excessive cooking, such as boiling, will severely reduce the enzyme activity of this protein in broccoli. In other words, eating broccoli that has been boiled in water is essentially the same as eating broccoli for purified nutritional supplements.

Fortunately, they found a way to save the consequences of this wrong cooking: drink the water that has been boiled broccoli properly.

Broccoli water is not a new concept. In fact, the “Family Health Guidebook” compiled by Harvard Medical School in 1999 recommended that the water used to assist broccoli be kept for soup, seasoning, stew, etc. However, the water of boiled broccoli is not easy to preserve, and parasites are a big problem. Practice has shown that bacteria and parasites that cause corruption are prone to breed in water.

So what should we do? If the boiling method will cause the nutrients to diffuse into the water, then switching to steaming can effectively avoid this problem. In the recently published results of this study, the authors advocated: “In order to preserve the glucosinolates in broccoli as much as possible, the best cooking method should be steaming. This also applies to other green vegetables.”