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American Morning

Paging Dr. Gupta: Microwaved Vegetables

Aired October 17, 2003 - 08:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Fruits and vegetables are always the healthy choice. But how you cook that broccoli, for example, can determine just how much nutrition you get. And in this case, newer methods aren't necessarily better.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is at the CNN Center with more for us.

Hey, Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

It's Friday, it's a good day to talk about broccoli. And if you're going to eat your broccoli, and so many people encourage that you do, you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of it that you possibly can. Broccoli certainly can be good for you, but which way is the best way to cook it? Well, that was the subject of a study actually. People study this sort of thing. And they looked at four different ways of cooking broccoli -- high pressure boiling, conventional boiling, steaming and microwaving.

As no surprise to some, but a surprise to others, microwaving was actually the worst way to cook broccoli, as easy as it may be. It takes away about 97 percent of what are known as precious antioxidants, something that makes broccoli so valuable in the first place. Antioxidants includes vitamin C, vitamin E, betacarotene, and other substances called flavonoids.

Antioxidants a serious substance there, an important substance. Over the years, a lot has been learned about them in terms of their health effects, specifically in terms of warding off cancer, heart disease and cataracts. So broccoli has been a good source of that sort of stuff. If you microwave it, though, you're losing up to 97 percent of it. So you're basically getting almost zero of the antioxidants by microwaving it. That was the results of this study, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Then how much do you lose if you boil it? Because I basically microwave it generally, so if I were boil it, what do I lose? And what's the best way to keep all the nutrients, or as many as possible?

GUPTA: All right, they looked at this. And this was actually sort of interesting. The more water content that your vegetables have, for instance, in the boiling process, you're going to start to leech away some of these, again, precious antioxidants. Steaming actually ended up being the best way to do it. They actually looked at the numbers there as well. You only lose some, but only about 11 percent of the precious antioxidants during the steaming process. So steaming the best, boiling second best, microwaving probably the worst.

O'BRIEN: Snacking on it raw easily the very best.

GUPTA: With ranch sauce.

O'BRIEN: I don't know, broccoli is kind of hard to chew on when it's not cooked. But what about other vegetables? All the same? Or across the board is this just a generalization, do you think?

GUPTA: There's actually some pretty big studies, and they did look at other vegetables as well. They looked at 20 other vegetables, some of the big ones there, you can take a look. Again, looking at some of these important antioxidants. Carrots, this is just the frozen versus just getting them fresh. The freezing process sort of blanches away some of these antioxidants as well. Vitamin C goes down by 30 percent, with carrots with peas, fresh peas versus frozen peas down to 20 to 30 percent, and spinach, another famous green vegetable, a good one for you, but if you're getting the frozen stuff, you're getting 70 percent less of folic acid. Again, one of these precious antioxidants.

All the folks who do these studies, though, take pains to point out to us, that eating vegetables still good for you, still getting some of it, but the frozen vegetables going to be not as good as fresh. I guess that's no surprise. And steaming always better than microwaving.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Sanjay, I'm going to put you on the spot. So can they extrapolate this study -- and I know this wasn't part of the study -- to say that if you microwave, because I microwave everything, whether it's meat or rice or whatever to warm it up, that you're losing nutrients there? Do you think that's a reasonable guess?

GUPTA: Well, they had looked at other food groups as well. This particular study looked at vegetables. But the microwaving process does tend to leech away free radicals , these radicals that are easily dissipated from the food or vegetables, things like that, so the microwaving process does do that. Although these green vegetables, these leafy green vegetables, seem to be the most susceptible to this sort of thing. They tend to be the hardest hit.

O'BRIEN: Oh my goodness, sounds like you're saying I've got to learn how to cook.

GUPTA: Buy a steamer.

O'BRIEN: Thanks a lot, Sanjay. Have a great weekend.

GUPTA: All right, see you soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 17, 2003 - 08:45   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Fruits and vegetables are always the healthy choice. But how you cook that broccoli, for example, can determine just how much nutrition you get. And in this case, newer methods aren't necessarily better.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta is at the CNN Center with more for us.

Hey, Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

It's Friday, it's a good day to talk about broccoli. And if you're going to eat your broccoli, and so many people encourage that you do, you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of it that you possibly can. Broccoli certainly can be good for you, but which way is the best way to cook it? Well, that was the subject of a study actually. People study this sort of thing. And they looked at four different ways of cooking broccoli -- high pressure boiling, conventional boiling, steaming and microwaving.

As no surprise to some, but a surprise to others, microwaving was actually the worst way to cook broccoli, as easy as it may be. It takes away about 97 percent of what are known as precious antioxidants, something that makes broccoli so valuable in the first place. Antioxidants includes vitamin C, vitamin E, betacarotene, and other substances called flavonoids.

Antioxidants a serious substance there, an important substance. Over the years, a lot has been learned about them in terms of their health effects, specifically in terms of warding off cancer, heart disease and cataracts. So broccoli has been a good source of that sort of stuff. If you microwave it, though, you're losing up to 97 percent of it. So you're basically getting almost zero of the antioxidants by microwaving it. That was the results of this study, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Then how much do you lose if you boil it? Because I basically microwave it generally, so if I were boil it, what do I lose? And what's the best way to keep all the nutrients, or as many as possible?

GUPTA: All right, they looked at this. And this was actually sort of interesting. The more water content that your vegetables have, for instance, in the boiling process, you're going to start to leech away some of these, again, precious antioxidants. Steaming actually ended up being the best way to do it. They actually looked at the numbers there as well. You only lose some, but only about 11 percent of the precious antioxidants during the steaming process. So steaming the best, boiling second best, microwaving probably the worst.

O'BRIEN: Snacking on it raw easily the very best.

GUPTA: With ranch sauce.

O'BRIEN: I don't know, broccoli is kind of hard to chew on when it's not cooked. But what about other vegetables? All the same? Or across the board is this just a generalization, do you think?

GUPTA: There's actually some pretty big studies, and they did look at other vegetables as well. They looked at 20 other vegetables, some of the big ones there, you can take a look. Again, looking at some of these important antioxidants. Carrots, this is just the frozen versus just getting them fresh. The freezing process sort of blanches away some of these antioxidants as well. Vitamin C goes down by 30 percent, with carrots with peas, fresh peas versus frozen peas down to 20 to 30 percent, and spinach, another famous green vegetable, a good one for you, but if you're getting the frozen stuff, you're getting 70 percent less of folic acid. Again, one of these precious antioxidants.

All the folks who do these studies, though, take pains to point out to us, that eating vegetables still good for you, still getting some of it, but the frozen vegetables going to be not as good as fresh. I guess that's no surprise. And steaming always better than microwaving.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Sanjay, I'm going to put you on the spot. So can they extrapolate this study -- and I know this wasn't part of the study -- to say that if you microwave, because I microwave everything, whether it's meat or rice or whatever to warm it up, that you're losing nutrients there? Do you think that's a reasonable guess?

GUPTA: Well, they had looked at other food groups as well. This particular study looked at vegetables. But the microwaving process does tend to leech away free radicals , these radicals that are easily dissipated from the food or vegetables, things like that, so the microwaving process does do that. Although these green vegetables, these leafy green vegetables, seem to be the most susceptible to this sort of thing. They tend to be the hardest hit.

O'BRIEN: Oh my goodness, sounds like you're saying I've got to learn how to cook.

GUPTA: Buy a steamer.

O'BRIEN: Thanks a lot, Sanjay. Have a great weekend.

GUPTA: All right, see you soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com