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8 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | JUNE 2025 By Clare Mendez, Resident I just love munching on fresh vegetables (fruit too), but I recently discovered that some vegetables are more nutritious when cooked. However, overcooking your vegetables can cause a loss of some valuable vitamins. Steaming, roasting, or stir- frying are the preferred methods and the addition of a little bit of fat (preferably monounsaturated fat such as olive oil or avocado oil), makes beta-carotene, protein and lutein more available for absorption by the body. One example of a vegetable more nutritious when cooked are carrots. A 2008 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that steaming carrots until tender boosted the concentration of cancer-ghting carotenoids by 14 percent. Another example is spinach. According to Consumer Reports, you'll absorb more calcium and iron from spinach if you eat the leafy greens cooked. e reason? Raw spinach has oxalic acid, which blocks the absorption of the minerals. To preserve loss of water-soluble B vitamins, avoid over cooking spinach. Cooking mushrooms concentrates the nutrients in them. A cup of cooked white ones has about twice the muscle-building potassium, heart-healthy niacin, and immune-boosting zinc as a cup of raw ones. And, whether tomatoes are baked, fried, or stewed, heat increases the phytochemical lycopene, which has been linked to lower rates of cancer and heart disease. Another vegetable more nutritious when cooked is asparagus. A study in the International Journal of Food Science and Technology found that cooking asparagus raised the level of ve disease- ghting antioxidants by 23 to 98 percent. Other vegetables more nutritious when cooked are bell peppers, kale, broccoli, zucchini and sweet potatoes. e key is to use cooking methods that preserve as many of the nutrients as possible. I don't know about you, but as I get older, my stomach is more sensitive to some meats and heavy gravies, so I have been reading up on vegetables such as these and nding ways to implement them into my daily consumption, not only to satisfy my hunger, but to improve my health.