I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?

Tom

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
> the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
> you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?
>

Tom, collards are one of the few vegetables whose nutrients
become more readily available to us when they are cooked.

That said, do not cook your collards until they are limp and
soggy piles of slime! Cook thoroughly but leave some body
in them. Cut them in strips with good chunks of the meaty stem
in them, and stop cooking when the stem part is done but
still firm. Like you would cabbage.

cybercat wrote:
> tombates wrote:
> > I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
> > the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
> > you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?
>
> collards are one of the few vegetables whose nutrients
> become more readily available to us when they are cooked.

Patently untrue... heat destroys vitamins... For maximum nutrition cook
all foods as little as possible... for best nutrition produce should be
eaten raw (a primary reason why juicers were developed). Anyone whose
alimentary canal is having a problem absorbing nutrition (vitamins and
minerals) needs to see a health professional... the healthy human body
is quite capable of properly digesting raw vegetables.

Sheldon

Most vegetables with significant crunch when raw will have more
accessable nutrients when slightly cooked. That includes carrots,
celery, cabbage, collards, etc. Cooking helps breaks the hard cellulose
so the nutrients, inside the cell wall, are more available to the body.
Overcooking will break the cell wall to the point where the vitamins
leach out into the cooking water or evaporate, thus making the vegetable
LESS nutritious than when you started out. Overcooking can also make
the vegetables less useful as a non-digestible fiber source.


That said, the proper amount of cooking time is to the level of doneness
the individual prefers. After all, if the diner hates nearly raw
vegetables and therefore doesn't eat them, all the nutritional value is
gone. Same goes for limp and soggy.


I know that slow cooking is traditional for collards, but I hate them
that way. (It seems to me that cooking vegetables to the slime-point is
traditional in lots of southern cooking.) I prefer them in a quick dunk
in boiling water (less than a minute) or stir-fried. I remove the inner
rib and just use the leaf.


--Lia

Sheldon wrote:

> For maximum nutrition cook all foods as little as possible... for best
> nutrition produce should be eaten raw (a primary reason why juicers were
> developed). Anyone whose alimentary canal is having a problem absorbing
> nutrition (vitamins and minerals) needs to see a health professional...
> the healthy human body is quite capable of properly digesting raw
> vegetables.

From http://www.emaxhealth.com/1/166.html:

Plant cells are surrounded by a wall. This wall is designed to resist
breakage and to protect the stored nutrition in plant cells. Digestive
juices act on the cell walls of plants little if at all; take a look in the
toilet the day after next time you eat corn on the cob to see how true this
is. Cooking, which can be expanded to include her sisters freezing, drying,
sprouting, fermenting, and preserving in oil, breaks the cell wall and is
necessary to liberate nutrients from plant cells. Cooked vegetables and
fruits, grains, and beans provide more nutrients and are more easily
digested than raw ones.

A Haiku verse that could sum this up is:

Chewing what is raw,
how can one smile?
Muscles of the jaw too tense.

A macrobiotic diet, the only vegetarian diet shown to put cancer in
remission, consists of cooked food exclusively. Around the world,
well-cooked meat broths, think chicken soup, are the food of choice for
convalescents.

Cooked plants are far more nourishing than raw plants, whether we look at
vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, or pulses (beans). Cooking not only breaks
the cell wall, liberating minerals to our bodies, it actually enhances and
activates many vitamins.

This is true especially of the carotenes, used to make vitamin A, and other
antioxidants in plants. Research found that the longer the corn is cooked
and the hotter the temperature, the greater the amount of antioxidants in
the corn.

This also applies to vitamin C. A baked potato contains far more vitamin C
than a raw potato. And sauerkraut (cabbage cooked by fermentation) contains
up to ten times as much vitamin C as raw cabbage.

Some vitamins do leach into cooking water. Cooking with little or no water
(for instance, steaming or braising) reduces vitamin loss in vegetables such
as broccoli from 97% to 11%.

Note, however, that the vitamins aren't lost or destroyed, but merely
transferred to the cooking water. Using that water for soup stock, or
drinking it, insures that you ingest all the nutrients, and in a highly
absorbable form.

Transferring nutrients into water, such as by making nourishing herbal
infusions and healing soups, and then ingesting them is far more effective,
in my experience, than wheat grass juice, green drinks, or any kind of
nutritional supplement. It is, in fact, one of the best ways to optimally
nourish oneself that I have found in three decades of paying attention to
health.

Even if some vitamins are lost in cooking, people absorb more of what is
there from cooked foods. Several recent studies measured vitamin levels in
the blood after eating raw and cooked vegetables. "Subjects who ate cooked
veggies absorbed four to five times more nutrients than those who ate raw
ones," reported researchers at the Institute of Food Research in 2003.


So Sheldon was wrong. Inasmuch as he was just spewing a geyser of shit from
the dungheap of misbegotten notions that formed in his head during
senescence, that's not really surprising.

Bob

Julia wrote:

> Most vegetables with significant crunch when raw will have more accessable
> nutrients when slightly cooked. That includes carrots, celery, cabbage,
> collards, etc. Cooking helps breaks the hard cellulose so the nutrients,
> inside the cell wall, are more available to the body. Overcooking will
> break the cell wall to the point where the vitamins leach out into the
> cooking water or evaporate, thus making the vegetable LESS nutritious than
> when you started out. Overcooking can also make the vegetables less
> useful as a non-digestible fiber source.
>
> That said, the proper amount of cooking time is to the level of doneness
> the individual prefers. After all, if the diner hates nearly raw
> vegetables and therefore doesn't eat them, all the nutritional value is
> gone. Same goes for limp and soggy.
>
> I know that slow cooking is traditional for collards, but I hate them that
> way. (It seems to me that cooking vegetables to the slime-point is
> traditional in lots of southern cooking.) I prefer them in a quick dunk
> in boiling water (less than a minute) or stir-fried. I remove the inner
> rib and just use the leaf.


The Southern tradition is to drink the pot likker as well as eat the
collards. So any vitamins which leached out into the cooking water will be
consumed when the diner drinks it.

Still, I've also stir-fried hearty greens. I don't believe I'm getting as
much nutrition as if I'd long-cooked them and consumed their cooking liquid,
but you have to make allowances for taste. So what if I don't get MAXIMUM
nutrition? I'm sure getting GOOD nutrition. I think that's what your second
paragraph is saying, right?

Bob

On 13 Sep 2006 13:28:02 -0700, wrote:

>I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
>the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
>you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?

Some vitamins will leach into the cooking water, so make sure to eat
all of that luscious pot liquor.

Tara

"Sheldon" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> cybercat wrote:
> > tombates wrote:
> > > I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
> > > the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
> > > you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?
> >
> > collards are one of the few vegetables whose nutrients
> > become more readily available to us when they are cooked.
>
> Patently untrue... heat destroys vitamins... For maximum nutrition cook
> all foods as little as possible... for best nutrition produce should be
> eaten raw (a primary reason why juicers were developed). Anyone whose
> alimentary canal is having a problem absorbing nutrition (vitamins and
> minerals) needs to see a health professional... the healthy human body
> is quite capable of properly digesting raw vegetables.
>

Actually, NO. Collards have MORE nutrition cooked than raw.

From http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch55.html


"Nutrition

Collards are a dieter's delight with their low calorie, low fat, and low
sodium content.
Across the nutrition scale, cooked collard greens offer more vitamins and
minerals
than raw. Though raw collards are still considered nutritious, cooking them
breaks
down their cell walls and releases higher levels of vitamins and minerals.

One cup of freshly cooked collards contains 49 calories; raw they contain
11 calories.

The protein content of one cup of cooked collards offers 4 grams
while the raw provides 1 gram.

Fiber in cooked collards lists 5 grams and only 1 gram for raw.

The fat content, while extremely low, is 0.7 grams for cooked and 0.2 for
raw.

Vitamin C is higher in cooked collards with 34.6 mg over the raw with
12.7 mg.

The vitamin A content of collards is impressive in both the cooked and raw
states,
with cooked providing 5945 I.U. and raw containing1377 I.U.

Again, in their cooked state collards are higher in the B vitamins than the
raw.
Folic acid content for that same one cup of cooked collards provides 177
mcg,
while the raw offers 59.8.


In mineral content cooked collards shine brighter than raw. Calcium jumps
well
ahead in cooked collards with 226 mg over the raw that contains only 52.2
mg.
While the cooked greens have .87 mg of iron in one cup, the raw provides
only 0.07 mg.
Cooked collards burst ahead of raw with 494 mg of potassium over the raw
that contains
81 mg. Even the trace mineral zinc comes out ahead in the cooked with 0.8 mg
over the
raw with less than 0.1 mg. down their cell walls and releases higher levels
of vitamins and
minerals."

Bob Terwilliger wrote:

So what if I don't get MAXIMUM
> nutrition? I'm sure getting GOOD nutrition. I think that's what your second
> paragraph is saying, right?


Yes. Some exaggeration will illustrate. Let's say someone invents the
perfect food that delivers perfect nutrition, except the finished meal
tastes like mulched grass on cardboard with an Ivory soap sauce.
Everyone hates it. They eat one bite, gag, and throw the rest away.
Then they go back to eating fried Twinkies. No matter how nutritious
that grass was, the diner hasn't gotten any nutrition from it.


Has the macrobiotic diet really been shown to put cancer in remission?
I know there have been a number of studies pointing in that general
direction and some amazing anecdotal evidence, but I'd never heard about
scientific proof, or even a statistical likelihood that a macrobiotic
diet improves one's chances. I've known too many cancer patients who
put full faith in the macrobiotic diet and died anyway.


I do know of population studies giving credence to the macrobiotic diet.
One is the well-touted idea that populations that get a diet
relatively low in fat (lower in fat than the typical North American
diet) have lower incidences of breast and colon cancer. Another is the
one showing that people who gets lots of vegetables high in
beta-carotene (orange fruits and vegetables such as canteloupe and sweet
potatoes) have lower incidences of cancer, and the last is the one
showing that vegetables in the cabbage family actually reversed the
growth of tumors in laboratory animals. The macrobiotic diet tends to
be low fat, big on cabbage and squash.


As for juicing, it isn't a bad way to go providing one likes vegetable
juices. If, for some reason, cooking vegetables isn't an option, a
juiced carrot will have more accessible nutrients than a cooked one for
the reasons we both mentioned.


--Lia

wrote:
> I usually cook collard greens, and have always heard that the longer
> the better. But what does long simmering times do to the vitamins? Do
> you lose them all because you cook the greens so long?
>
> Tom
>

I can't answer your question about vitamins, but I'm one of those people that
just does not like overcooked greens. A quick saute with an onion and a
chopped apple, maybe some mashed garlic and then finished with a dash of rice
vinegar and a drizzle of sesame oil

--
..:Heather:.
www.velvet-c.com
I thought I was driving by Gettysburg once but it ends up I was just driving
by your mom's house.

Bob Terwilliger wrote:
> Sheldon wrote:
>
> > For maximum nutrition cook all foods as little as possible... for best
> > nutrition produce should be eaten raw (a primary reason why juicers were
> > developed). Anyone whose alimentary canal is having a problem absorbing
> > nutrition (vitamins and minerals) needs to see a health professional...
> > the healthy human body is quite capable of properly digesting raw
> > vegetables.
>
> From http://www.emaxhealth.com/1/166.html:
>
> Plant cells are surrounded by a wall. This wall is designed to resist
> breakage and to protect the stored nutrition in plant cells. Digestive
> juices act on the cell walls of plants little if at all; take a look in the
> toilet the day after next time you eat corn on the cob to see how true this
> is. Cooking, which can be expanded to include her sisters freezing, drying,
> sprouting, fermenting, and preserving in oil, breaks the cell wall and is
> necessary to liberate nutrients from plant cells. Cooked vegetables and
> fruits, grains, and beans provide more nutrients and are more easily
> digested than raw ones.
>
> A Haiku verse that could sum this up is:
>
> Chewing what is raw,
> how can one smile?
> Muscles of the jaw too tense.
>
> A macrobiotic diet, the only vegetarian diet shown to put cancer in
> remission, consists of cooked food exclusively. Around the world,
> well-cooked meat broths, think chicken soup, are the food of choice for
> convalescents.
>
> Cooked plants are far more nourishing than raw plants, whether we look at
> vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, or pulses (beans). Cooking not only breaks
> the cell wall, liberating minerals to our bodies, it actually enhances and
> activates many vitamins.
>
> This is true especially of the carotenes, used to make vitamin A, and other
> antioxidants in plants. Research found that the longer the corn is cooked
> and the hotter the temperature, the greater the amount of antioxidants in
> the corn.
>
> This also applies to vitamin C. A baked potato contains far more vitamin C
> than a raw potato. And sauerkraut (cabbage cooked by fermentation) contains
> up to ten times as much vitamin C as raw cabbage.
>
> Some vitamins do leach into cooking water. Cooking with little or no water
> (for instance, steaming or braising) reduces vitamin loss in vegetables such
> as broccoli from 97% to 11%.
>
> Note, however, that the vitamins aren't lost or destroyed, but merely
> transferred to the cooking water. Using that water for soup stock, or
> drinking it, insures that you ingest all the nutrients, and in a highly
> absorbable form.
>
> Transferring nutrients into water, such as by making nourishing herbal
> infusions and healing soups, and then ingesting them is far more effective,
> in my experience, than wheat grass juice, green drinks, or any kind of
> nutritional supplement. It is, in fact, one of the best ways to optimally
> nourish oneself that I have found in three decades of paying attention to
> health.
>
> Even if some vitamins are lost in cooking, people absorb more of what is
> there from cooked foods. Several recent studies measured vitamin levels in
> the blood after eating raw and cooked vegetables. "Subjects who ate cooked
> veggies absorbed four to five times more nutrients than those who ate raw
> ones," reported researchers at the Institute of Food Research in 2003.
>
>
> So Sheldon was wrong. Inasmuch as he was just spewing a geyser of shit from
> the dungheap of misbegotten notions that formed in his head during
> senescence, that's not really surprising.

Nothing, asbsolutely NOTHING you wrote is factual.

"Julia Altshuler" > wrote in message
. ..
>
> Most vegetables with significant crunch when raw will have more accessable
> nutrients when slightly cooked. That includes carrots, celery, cabbage,
> collards, etc. Cooking helps breaks the hard cellulose so the nutrients,
> inside the cell wall, are more available to the body. Overcooking will
> break the cell wall to the point where the vitamins leach out into the
> cooking water or evaporate, thus making the vegetable LESS nutritious than
> when you started out. Overcooking can also make the vegetables less
> useful as a non-digestible fiber source.
>
>
> That said, the proper amount of cooking time is to the level of doneness
> the individual prefers. After all, if the diner hates nearly raw
> vegetables and therefore doesn't eat them, all the nutritional value is
> gone. Same goes for limp and soggy.
>
>
> I know that slow cooking is traditional for collards, but I hate them that
> way. (It seems to me that cooking vegetables to the slime-point is
> traditional in lots of southern cooking.) I prefer them in a quick dunk
> in boiling water (less than a minute) or stir-fried. I remove the inner
> rib and just use the leaf.
>
>
> --Lia
>

To an extent, the cooking time for collards depends on the source of the
greens. Sometimes, the ones I get at the grocery store are like leather.
There's no way a quick dunk would make them pleasant to chew. The ones I
grow at home, or buy at the farmer's market have much more delicate leaves.
So, there is NO way to state a hard & fast rule.

"Bob Terwilliger" > wrote in message
...
> .......
> A Haiku verse that could sum this up is:
>
> Chewing what is raw,
> how can one smile?
> Muscles of the jaw too tense.
>

That is not Haiku, which basically has a meter of 5 - 7 - 5

> A macrobiotic diet, the only vegetarian diet shown to put cancer in
> remission, consists of cooked food exclusively. Around the world,
> well-cooked meat broths, think chicken soup, are the food of choice
> for
> convalescents.
>

That is simply fallacious garbage. For instance:

"The American Medical Association and various governmental health
agencies opposed the macrobiotic diet due to its restrictive nature. In
fact, there were a number of reports of health problems and even
deaths."

http://www.oncolink.com/oncotips/art...s=5&ss=5&id=60

Stop spreading crap. If you want to yell at other posters do so from
a standpoint of knowledge, not blatant ignorance.

pavane

After being refuted, Sheldon said "I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!"

>> Cooked vegetables and fruits, grains, and beans provide more nutrients
>> and are more easily digested than raw ones.
<snip>
>> Cooked plants are far more nourishing than raw plants, whether we look at
>> vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, or pulses (beans). Cooking not only
>> breaks the cell wall, liberating minerals to our bodies, it actually
>> enhances and activates many vitamins.
<snip>
>> So Sheldon was wrong. Inasmuch as he was just spewing a geyser of shit
>> from the dungheap of misbegotten notions that formed in his head during
>> senescence, that's not really surprising.
>
> Nothing, asbsolutely NOTHING you wrote is factual.


Likewise, I'm "asbsolutely" sure.

Face it, in your dotage you're incapable of telling fact from fiction.
You're incapable of distinguishing between the voices in your head and the
voices on your television. You're incapable of thought, you're incapable of
reason, you're incapable of accurate recollection, and you're incapable of
learning. So just shut the **** up; nobody wants your ignorant rantings.

Bob

Spot on!!!

You are very well informed. Keep it up!

Diego "WebTV newbie" wrote:

> You are very well informed. Keep it up!

You're welcome. To whom were you addressing your post?

Bob