Cooking is awesome, it gives you a chance to take the same ingredients as someone else and create something completely different.
It can also make or break food.
So below we have a few suggestions to get the most nutritionally from your food and make life simple to get RESULTS!
Lightly steaming vegetables is generally the most preferred option of cooking.
This preserves a lot of the nutrients along with preventing the formation of any free-radicals (these are rouge electrons which have correlations to promote cancer within the body).
When steaming vegetables, its very useful to collect the water used as this will contain a large amount of B vitamins which are lost through cooking (due to B vitamins being water soluble).
A good option here is to use this as a base for soup, stocks or sauces. This method ensures you obtain more nutrients from foods.
Boiling carbohydrates such as potatoes or rice inserts an additional water molecule into the glucose chain.
This results in a slower rate of glucose released from the carbohydrate chain.
Subsequently, Insulin levels are at a lesser demand as there is not a large influx of glucose into the bloodstream and less urgency to store the glucose into the cells.
In short - boiled rice, better for blood sugar and keeping you lean.
Here is where we can get creative and cheeky…
Adding a small amount of coconut oil or ghee to your rice when cooking, helps change the starch content of the carbohydrates to a more resistant model.
This resistant starch is not absorbed by your body, instead it feeds the friendly bugs inside the digestive system and produces a byproduct which helps keep the gut wall strong and functional.
This method therefore helps you reduce your carbohydrates intake marginal along with improving gut health.
It is best avoiding burning meats when cooking them - one they taste like crap and two…
Burnt meats contain higher levels of homocysteine.
So what?
Well, that places the body under oxidative stress – increasing inflammation, stress and risk factors for cancer.
Simple rule: DON’T burn your meat!
Any grains are best purchased ‘gluten-free’.
Gluten is a pro-flammatory protein which decreases amount of nutrients absorbed through the gut wall due to damage, increases inflammation, can cause brain fog, lower recovery and decrease energy.
We recommend you give your gut a chance to heal itself, repair and then when occasionally you do have gluten, you won’t be impacted by the pro-flammatory response.
Nut’s are a great source of fats, easy to get hold of, easy to take on the go and packed full of nutrients and calories.
It is a good option to soak nuts for 24 hours.
This dramatically decreases the level of phytic acid found within nuts along with other enzymes along with increases the bioavailability of some nutrients such as B vitamins.
Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient which prevents the absorption of some minerals.
Soak your nuts - you’ll get more bang for your buck!
