Ten Healthy Cooking Tips for Thanksgiving
Image provided by André Natta
Cooking food is a great way to destroy harmful microorganisms but it also destroys essential nutrients. The best way to preserve the nutrients of foods is to eat foods raw. However, if the food needs to be cooked, you should cook it to avoid food poisoning. A good example of a food that needs to be cooked is meat-based food, such as chicken. Even though cooking food will destroy some of its essential nutrients, if you learn healthy ways to cook food, you can minimize the amount of nutrients that are destroyed or lost during cooking. You can also make the food healthier by adding certain herbs, spices and healthy oils. The ten healthy cooking tips in this article should help you preserve more nutrients during cooking. Use these cooking tips to help you cook a Thanksgiving dinner that is as healthy as it is tasty.
Ten Healthy Cooking Tips
- If possible, always cook food in a pan that has a lid. This will help prevent some of its nutrients from escaping. In addition, the food will cook faster which will reduce the amount of nutrients being destroyed by heat.
- Cook only organic foods. Unlike organic foods, most conventional foods are contaminated with pesticides and herbicides, and some are even genetically modified. If you live in the United States, the top five genetically modified foods are corn, soy, canola, cottonseed and sugar beets. Out of these five, corn is one of the most common food that is genetically modified. Since corn is a popular dish for Thanksgiving, you may want to use organic corn.
- Cook foods that are fresh. Each day a food sits in the refrigerator, it losses nutrients. The longer it sits in the refrigerator, the more nutrients it losses. To prevent this, buy the food that you need on the day before cooking. Try not to buy it more than three days in advanced. If possible, buy foods from farmer’s market because they are usually more fresh.
- Avoid using table salt because it contains harmful synthetic chemicals. Instead, use sea salt but avoid the iodized sea salt and bleached sea salt. Himalayan and celtic sea salt are two good choices.
- Avoid using conventional cooking oil, such as corn, canola and cottonseed oil because most of these oils contain genetically modified ingredients, unless they are labeled non-GMO or organic. Plus, these conventional cooking oils are depleted of essential nutrients. One of the best cooking oils to use for cooking food is raw organic virgin coconut oil. To learn more about this oil, please visit this page.
- Use natural or organic spices. Cooking a healthy meal that has great flavors may be hard but it is not hard when you have spices. With the right spices, you can turn a plain meal into a gourmet meal. Spices are also full of antioxidants and essential nutrients to help the body fight diseases. For a list of spices and their flavors and uses, please visit this page.
- If you do not like to cook food with oil, a great alternative is to use water or vegetable stock. The problem with cooking food with water or vegetable stock is that the food may stick to the cooking pan. To prevent this, you need to cook the food at low temperatures and stir often to prevent the food from sticking to the cooking pan. For best results, use a non-sticky cooking pan.
- Steaming food is a great way to preserve its nutrients. Steaming can preserve twice as much nutrients as boiling. This will help preserve some of the water-soluble vitamins and heat-sensitive vitamins.
- If possible use a pressure cooker to cook food. Pressure cookers can cook food faster, preserving more of its heat-sensitive vitamins.
- For baking food, instead of using butter or conventional oil to coat the pan, use pureed fruit to coat the pan. Pureed bananas, pureed prunes, applesauce and baby food purees are great for coating pans. Organic pureed fruit is preferred.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
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Hello energy and health fanatics, independent thinkers, truth seekers and freedom lovers! My name is Pao L. Chang and I’m the author/founder of EnergyFanatics.com. Ever since graduating from high school, I noticed that my energy level was not as high as it used to be. While in college, I decided to educate myself about energy, health, wellness, and explore the mystery of alternative medicine and the power of spiritual healing. This journey taught me many things...