March 2022

Know How to Eat Broccoli for Good Nutrition – Nowadays, more and more people feel they want to be able to get much more benefits. Included with some vegetables that contain many of the best nutrients.

Who doesn’t love to eat broccoli? Many, especially children! In fact, in terms of nutrition, broccoli is one of the super vegetables that are rich in antioxidants, fiber, vitamin C, and other important nutrients.

There are many ways to process broccoli. Boiled, sauteed, baked, fried, or chopped and mixed with other ingredients such as croquettes or nuggets, and so on. Especially for children, sometimes parents have to rack their brains to be able to slip broccoli (or other vegetables) into their children’s food.

Because it can be cooked in various ways, the question arises of what is the healthiest way to cook or process broccoli? Is it better to eat it raw or cooked? Come on, let’s find out the answer together through the following review!

1. Can be eaten raw
Although it is usually cooked first, broccoli can be eaten raw. However, before that, make sure to clean broccoli superstarjew properly so that no dirt or foreign compounds enter the body.

To be safe, first you have to clean the broccoli head first under running water. With your fingers, clean the stains that are there. Don’t forget to also clean the gaps between the stems. Once done, gently pat the broccoli head with a paper towel until it is completely dry. Then, cut the head of broccoli, slice according to taste, and the vegetables are ready to eat!

How to Eat Broccoli to Get Maximum Nutrition, Raw or Ripe? illustration of a child eating broccoli raw (pexels.com/cottonbro)
Both broccoli heads and stems are safe to eat. However, stringy stems are harder and harder to chew. Therefore, cut the stems thin for easy chewing.

Broccoli can be served raw with a dip like yogurt, hummus, or dressing like a salad. Alternatively, broccoli can be added to other dishes to balance the texture, taste and nutrition.

2. Cooking broccoli reduces its nutrients?
As previously explained, broccoli is rich in vitamin C. In fact, 90 grams of broccoli can meet the daily nutritional adequacy rate of up to 90 percent for men and 108 percent for women. However, vitamin C is very sensitive to heat, so cooking broccoli can significantly reduce vitamin C.

According to a 2009 Chinese study entitled “Effects of different cooking methods on health-promoting compounds of broccoli” in the Journal of Zhejiang University Science B, cooking broccoli can lower its vitamin C content. Sauteing can remove it by up to 38 percent, while boiling it removes about 33 percent. percent.

In addition to vitamin C, cooking broccoli is also said to remove chlorophyll, the healthy substance in broccoli that gives it its green color. Compared to other broccoli processing, steaming is the worst cooking method because it removes its nutrients significantly.

Then, broccoli also has a high sulforaphane content. For your information, various studies prove that these compounds can nourish the body and help prevent diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and digestive problems.

The problem is, the sulforaphane in broccoli is more easily absorbed when eaten raw. According to a 2008 study in the Netherlands in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, raw broccoli promises higher sulforaphane content and is easily absorbed by the body.

3. Cooking broccoli activates antioxidants?
So, is cooking broccoli definitely unhealthy for the body? Not really! Although most research is against it, cooking broccoli has its own benefits.

One of them, cooking broccoli can significantly increase its antioxidant activity, especially carotenoids. Carotenoids are antioxidant compounds that are useful in helping prevent disease and boost the immune system.

According to a South Korean study published in the journal Food Science and Biotechnology in 2018, cooking broccoli can increase the carotenoid content. This is because the heating process softens the walls of this vegetable and breaks down the carotenoid protein complex so that it is easy to extract.