The implications of cooking foods and methods used

Part Six

Cooking Vegetables

Many vegetable foodstuffs, unlike animal foodstuffs, can scarcely be too thoroughly cooked, and boiling is for them the most suitable process. Starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, are not digestible unless they have been boiled sufficiently to cause all the starch-grains to swell and burst their cellulose envelopes. It is this that causes the potato to become mealy by cooking. Sodden and hard or waxy, they are not digestible. Potatoes should be placed in boiling water, with the addition of salt. There is no doubt that potatoes boiled in their skins retain a flavour of which they are otherwise robbed. The skins of the potatoes do contain some small percentage of a poisonous alkaloid, solanine, which is extracted by boiling and probably destroyed. There is, therefore, a reason not to use the water in which potatoes have been boiled in their skins; but there is no reason for the throwing away of the water in which peeled potatoes have been boiled, since the alkaloid has been removed in the peelings. Steaming is, however, the most excellent method for the cooking of potatoes, no element of flavour being lost by such a method.

Green vegetables require prolonged boiling to make them tender. They should be placed in boiling water, and kept boiling uninterruptedly till removed for being served. As green vegetables are especially valuable for the salts they contain, and as these salts are to a considerable extent removed by water, and especially by soft water, it is better to boil them in hard water or in water to which salt has been added in the proportion of 2 ounces to the gallon of water. On the other hand they may be cooked in casserole and served in their juices.

As regards vegetables like peas, beans, and lentils, their value as food-stuffs depends to a very great extent on their being thoroughly cooked. It has been shown, for example, that when the flour of such food has been used, baked into cakes, and so cooked and eaten, 91.8% of the protein constituent was made use of in the body; but when used in their natural form, and boiled after previous soaking in water, only 59.8% was retained in the body; the rest was expelled undigested as waste. This is undoubtedly partly because of the flour permitting of more thorough cooking, and partly, also, no doubt, because it can be more readily attacked by the digestive fluids.

Losses in Cooking.

By the various methods of cooking that have been noted, the meat, as might be expected, loses some of its weight. Obviously the loss will be greater in meat roasted or baked, because of the considerable evaporation of water and melting away of fat. The loss is least by boiling, though by this method of cooking it reaches 20%, that is 1/5 of the weight, so that boiling is the most economical method of cooking. Letheby gives the following table as expressing the loss of different pieces of meat by the various processes:

Note that mutton is meat from an adult sheep; we normally eat lamb - baby sheep.

Conclusions

There are several conclusions we can draw from this paper:

1. From the above it is clear that cooking has both benefits and adverse effects. People eating a raw paleolithic diet will agree; those eating the processed food of modern industrialised societies, thinking it is 'healthy' may have different thoughts.

2. Cooking meat and foods of animal origin is generally harmful; but vegetables must be well cooked to extract the maximum nutrition from them.

3. For frying, the use of non-stick pans and spray oils to minimise fat intake is exactly the wrong thing to do.

4. The American habit of cooking bacon so that it is so crisp that it shatters, destroys as a food. This may be why such 'foods' have been linked to intestinal cancers.

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Last updated 5 January 2009