Anybody who has read our What Makes Us Different section knows that I am not crazy about oversimplifications.  Yet, I can understand why they happen.  Some topics are just too complex to be explained in a factoid, meme, or sound bite, so information is rounded off and oversimplified in order to shove it into said formats.  This is most certainly the case when it comes to answering the question, “Which cooking method is best for retaining nutrients in vegetables?”

For example, I look on one site and see an illustration endorsing steaming while vilifying microwaving, while another suggests microwaving.  Who is right?  They are both oversimplifying, which is what leads to the apparent contradiction and confusion.  The true answer depends on the exact question being asked, including such factors as the particular vegetable, cooking conditions, and specific nutrient(s) of interest.

To give yourself a sense of the complexity, take a look at this 2009 article in the Journal of Food Science.  Scroll down to pages four and five where you see the tables showing the changes in antioxidant activity in the various vegetables after being cooked in different ways.  Don’t worry about the numbers or what the acronyms and terminologies mean.  Let me just call your attention to a few themes.

1. Cooking a given vegetable in a particular fashion can help in one way and hurt in another.  Multiple tables, not just one, show antioxidant activity because individual nutrients react differently as they are cooked.  For example, according to the tables, microwaving celery reduces its LOO radical scavenging capacity (again, don’t worry about the acronyms and terminology – that’s not the point) while the same exact cooking method actually boosts its OH radical scavenging capacity.
2. Anybody who preaches the virtues of always eating raw is overgeneralizing; in some cases, cooking can help you get more nutrition out of your foods.  Look at Table 4 and notice all the dashes and negative numbers.  Those dashes indicate no losses after cooking compared to when the vegetable was raw, and negative numbers indicate that the antioxidant activity was increased, not reduced, by cooking.
3. No single cooking method is going to be best for all vegetables.  Pick almost any column in Table 2, 3, or 4, and you will see it is comprised of positive numbers, negative numbers, and dashes.  Check out the griddling column in Table 2, for example, and you will see eight positive numbers, six negative numbers, and six dashes.  This indicates that griddling reduced LOO radical scavenging capacity in eight of the vegetables, boosted it in six other vegetables, and left it unchanged in the remaining six.
4. No single study is going to tell us everything we want to know.  Science is much more complex than that.  Consider that this is just one of many studies that investigated the effects of cooking methods on vegetable nutrients.  It examined this particular group of vegetables for changes in three nutrients according to the specific cooking conditions explained in Table 1.  Do you think it might make a difference if they baked the vegetables at 150^oC or 250^oC rather than 200^oC?  What if they cooked the vegetables for half the time, or twice the time?  What if they fried them with sunflower oil instead of olive oil?  What if they used a different variety of onion?  What if they had chosen to examine other nutrients, such as vitamin C or calcium?

Wow, this is getting confusing, isn’t it?  If you are even still reading this, you are probably one of the few (Hi, Mom!) who kept going after the first paragraph or two.  You can see then how tempting it is to oversimplify.  I almost want to do it myself right now, but instead I will leave you with a question.

How do you like your vegetables?

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a patient a few months ago after he switched to me from another dietitian.  His previous dietitian told him which vegetables he should eat raw, which ones he should cook, how he should cook them, etc.  I know she meant well, and I am sure some patients are looking for those kinds of orders.  As this man said to me though, “She should just be happy I am eating any vegetables at all!”  We need to remember that you are neither a lab animal nor a case study in some nutrition school homework assignment.  You are a free-living person with feelings and other factors that influence your decisions.  It isn’t all about numbers.  We need to remember the context.

Personally, I don’t care that microwaving my celery would boost its OH radical scavenging capacity by approximately 39.3%; the idea of softening a vegetable that I enjoy for its crunch sounds pretty unappealing to me.  Just let me have my ants on a log and I’ll go on my merry way.

Before the Boston marathon bombings caused me to shift gears, I had intended on writing last week’s blog entry about our recent trip to Costa Rica.  In the very early morning hours of Patriot’s Day, Joanne and I returned from a short vacation there.  As was the case on our honeymoon, we took particular interest in the food.

For better or worse, much of the food at the two resorts where we stayed was Americanized.  In other words, the menus contained several items that were not traditional in Costa Rica, but rather were attempts to provide American tourists with familiar foods: cheeseburgers, pasta, pizza, French fries, etc.

We did, however, learn that rice and beans are prevalent in Costa Rican cuisine and many Costa Ricans start their day with a dish of gallo pinto, a traditional dish made with these two staples.  I had gallo pinto for breakfast a handful of mornings and really enjoyed it.

I find that when the topic of breakfast first comes up in my sessions, patients initially feel like they are limited to the usual options: cold cereals, hot cereals, bagels, eggs, bacon, waffles, muffins, pancakes, yogurt, etc.

What they come to realize though is that breakfast is just like any other meal of the day and we need not limit ourselves to the traditional breakfast options.  In other words, while breakfast options certainly include the typical options I listed above, they also include salads, sandwiches, entrees, or anything you might have at any other time of the day.  Gallo pinto is a perfect example.  Not too many Americans would typically consider rice and beans a breakfast option, yet they fill that role quite well for millions of Costa Ricans.

What might you consider having for breakfast if you expand your options beyond typical breakfast foods?

The following blog entry appeared as a letter to the editor in the Wellesley Townsman on April 25, 2013.

I ran my last Boston marathon years before Joanne and I met.  Since then, she has occasionally asked me if I would ever consider running another one.   My response was always no, I could not envision a reason to do so.

The stretch of Boylston Street where Monday’s bombings occurred is special ground.  Every time I was on the verge of finishing the marathon, I took off my sunglasses as I made the left onto Boylston because I wanted the most raw, unfiltered absorption of the experience and atmosphere as I could have.  The straightaway is long, much longer than it appears on TV.  The finish line, in sight the entire time it takes to cover the distance, cues each runner to remember the reasons why he or she decided to race in the first place.  Throughout their unpleasant, cold, and mushy winter training, runners fantasize about running down Boylston with the crowd roaring, the finish line in sight.

That stretch of Boylston might be the only spot in the entire city where dreams literally come true for thousands of people every single year.

For many runners, finishing the marathon would be impossible without the support and encouragement of those along the route, including not just the volunteers, but also the spectators. They make the day what it is.  Without them, the marathon would not be an event, but rather just a bunch of people going out for a jog.  When I had to drop out of the 2004 race due to a medical problem, a complete stranger ran out her front door after seeing me collapse at the end of her driveway and cared for me until I was loaded into an ambulance.  More times than I can count, I saw struggling racers break out of their shuffling walks and back into jogs because somebody on the side of the road told them they could still do it.

A tragedy like Monday’s bombing would have been wrong no matter where it occurred.  If they blew up the local diner or bus stop instead of the Boston marathon finish line it would have still been wrong, but it would have been a different kind of wrong.  In a city where we tend to keep to our own circles, cut each other off and exchange middle fingers in traffic, and walk past each other without even batting an eye, the marathon is the antithesis: strangers act like best friends in order to build something overwhelmingly positive.  Somebody attacked that and tainted it.  They went after the city at its finest and hit us in the heart.

We need to get that back; we need to make that stretch of Boylston special again.

Many ways exist in which we can make that happen, none of which will be more significant than when thousands of spectators line Boylston Street again for next year’s race.  As for me, I am a runner, I have been my whole life.  It’s what I do.  Given that, I aim to establish a 2014 marathon charity team to fundraise for Monday’s victims, to enter the race as a member of that team, and to run down that Boyston straightaway slapping hands with every spectator I can reach.