Many people believe that eating some grilled fruits and vegetables during a barbecue can balance their nutrition. In fact, it's difficult to control the heat when grilling crisp, tender vegetables on a charcoal fire, making them easy to burn. Compared to meat, vegetables are more prone to producing carcinogens, and vitamins are largely lost during the high-temperature grilling process. Eating fruits and vegetables grilled is even less healthy.
Therefore, do not grill vegetables and fruits for a long time, and do not eat grilled food frequently.
Nutritionist Zeng Lifang: The above statements are correct. If you really want to balance your nutrition as much as possible during a barbecue, you can completely wrap grilled meat with raw leafy greens, which can greatly reduce the toxicity of carcinogens. For example, cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, rapeseed, and broccoli can be eaten as cold dishes with grilled meat. This is because these vegetables contain compounds such as dithiol compounds, isothiocyanates, indole-3-carbinol, and sulforaphane, which can increase the activity of carcinogen-detoxifying enzymes and have an anti-cancer effect.
It should be reminded that the anti-cancer effect of vegetables and fruits is not the result of a single component, but the combined effect of multiple components. Therefore, it is not recommended to grill some fruits and vegetables to achieve a balanced diet, because the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables is largely reflected in their rich vitamins. However, excessive heating will destroy them, leading to the loss of certain components and failing to achieve the combined effect of multiple components.