When it comes to vitamin C, how you prep your food matters. You can easily get all your vitamin C from foods and can minimize nutrient loss with certain cooking techniques.
Subscribe to Nourishable at
Follow Nourishable on twitter, facebook and instagram to stay up to date on all things nutrition.
fb.me/nourishable.tv
Hosting, Research, Writing & Post-Production by Lara Hyde, PhD
Assistant Producer: Aliza Baskir
Music & Video Production by Robbie Hyde
Opening Motion Graphics by Jay Purugganan
Script with in-text citations:
The information in this video is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this video is for general information purposes only.
References
Footage | Pexels: cottonbro, Rathaphon Nanthapreecha, Engin Akyurt, Oleg Magni, Ketut Subiyanto, Pressmaster, Anastasia Shuraeva, Lukas, Preedado Chookaew, Wikimedia commons: The National Archives UK (Public Domain), Pixabay: stux, aghyadnajjar
Adults should get between 75 and 90 mg of vitamin C per day, but what does that look like? What foods are high in vitamin C and how does cooking change their content? Vitamin C is an essential nutrient that we need to get from our diet. Deficiency leads to scurvy, causing bleeding gums, impaired wound healing, and even death. Vitamin C deficiency isn’t much of an issue today because you can easily obtain enough from your diet. Lots of plant foods are loaded with vitamin C. Navel orange, Kale, Red bell pepper, strawberries, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kiwi. So even if citrus isn’t your thing you can easily get plenty of vitamin C from other fruits and veggies. Potatoes also have vitamin C. It turns out that vitamin C is super sensitive. It’s easily destroyed by oxygen, light, copper, and, in the case of french fries, heat. So when it comes to vitamin C, how you prep your food matters. Vitamin C is water-soluble and will leak out of foods into hot cooking water. To preserve vitamin C content you can replace boiling with other methods using less water and shorter cook times like steaming, microwaving, or stir-frying. Some metals like copper can deactivate vitamin C, and so don’t cook using copper pots. Since it’s also sensitive to oxygen, cutting foods beforehand will destroy some vitamin C due to air exposure. It’s best to store fruits and veggies whole until you need them, and if you have to chop in advance, cut foods into larger pieces. While vitamin C deficiency is devastating, thankfully we don’t have to worry about it much today. Since vitamin C is water-soluble, our bodies can’t efficiently store it so we need to eat some every day. Vitamin C is present in so many fruits and veggies. If you eat them raw or utilize methods like steaming, microwaving or stir-frying then you’re definitely getting your daily dose. No need to take a vitamin C supplement when you can easily get sufficient amounts from foods.
