Don't throw away vegetable leaves and skins easily in hot weather
Core tip: Use less oil and salt when making vegetarian dishes. Blanching and mixing vegetables is better than stewing or stir-frying. Don't throw away vegetable leaves and skins easily.
As the weather gets hotter, people's appetite decreases. They can't eat greasy meat, and some people want to lose weight during the hot weather, so vegetarian food has become everyone's favorite. Eating a moderate amount of vegetarian food can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes, and tumors. However, if vegetarian food is not prepared correctly, it is not good for your health. Let's take a look at a nutritionist's vegetarian guide below.
Use less oil and salt when making vegetarian dishes
Many people use a lot of cooking oil when cooking, especially in the north, where there is a habit of using more oil and salt. Everyone knows that vegetables are good for your health, but they don't realize that vegetables are very absorbent to oil. No matter what kind of cooking oil is used, the fat content is over 98%, which means it's almost all fat. If a dish contains 30 ml of oil, it means you are consuming nearly 30 grams of fat. In this way, vegetables not only fail to reduce fat but may even lead to weight gain. Excessive salt intake can easily lead to high blood pressure and cause excessive water retention in the body, which is also not good for your health.
Blanching and mixing vegetables is better than stewing or stir-frying
Some people like to eat stewed dishes, but vitamin C and some antioxidants in vegetables are not very heat-resistant and will "escape" when heated. If they are stewed for a long time, these health-promoting components will be lost by half or more, which is a bit of a pity.
Actually, as long as you don't use too much oil and the cooking time is not too long, any way of eating vegetables is fine. If you have to say which method is best, then blanching and mixing is the best. You can add some sesame paste, sesame oil, olive oil, or a little heated cooking oil. On one hand, blanching and mixing reduces the heating time during the stir-frying process, reducing the loss of vitamins and antioxidants and retaining more nutrients. On the other hand, it omits the process of adding oil during cooking, making it lower in calories. Furthermore, from a health and wellness perspective, it is more suitable for people who are sensitive to cold, have poor digestion, or are prone to bloating, and it also reduces the high risk of summer enteritis.
Don't throw away vegetable leaves and skins easily
Every part of a vegetable has nutritional value. The green leaves are the factory where plants synthesize nutrients and are the essence of nutrition. Throwing them away will greatly reduce the nutritional value of the vegetable. For example, the concentration of carotene in the outer green leaves of cabbage is more than ten times higher than in the white center leaves, and the vitamin C content is also several times higher. The carotene and vitamin C content in lettuce leaves are also higher than in the stems.
In addition, eggplant skin, radish skin, sweet potato skin, and tomato skin contain anthocyanins, isothiocyanates, antioxidant components, and dietary fiber, and also have a certain anti-cancer effect. If you can keep more of the skin or even eat the skin, it is obviously more beneficial to your health.