Four food preparation methods to maximize nutrition - healthier than cooking

 Monday, January 12, 2015 by: Derek Henry

(NaturalNews) Due to poor agricultural practices and excessive food processing, the food that ends up on our plate is typically a shadow of its former self in regards to nutritional content. To make matters worse, we tend to cook these nutrient deprived foods and further destroy their nutritional value.





To ensure you get the most nutrition out of your food, focus on buying clean, whole foods, and use these 4 methods to expand their nutritional benefits.

Fermenting

Fermenting foods could be one of the most economical and powerful ways to introduce incredible nutrition to your body. Fermenting is simply a culturing process that produces beneficial bacteria that are very important in maintaining a healthy gut flora balance. Introducing them to your diet will improve the function of your digestive and immune system, your liver, and your brain!

As an example, sauerkraut (fermented cabbage) is a source of many nutrients including:

- Vitamin B1, B6, and B9
- Vitamin C and K
- Manganese, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and iron

However, even more important is the amount of live probiotics and enzymes in unpasteurized sauerkraut, which makes these nutrients highly bioavailable to the human body.

Juicing

Another great way to get more nutrition on a daily basis is by juicing fruits and vegetables. Although this doesn't provide more nutrition, it does allow you to eat more fruits and vegetables and reach the recommended amount of servings each day with relative ease.

Not only that, but juicing makes the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes in produce much easier to assimilate, as they go straight into your system without having to be broken down. With the sad state of digestive systems today, there are varying limitations on what the digestive system can absorb, but juicing helps bypass that problem by liberating key nutrients from the tough plant cell walls for you so you get the most out of your fruits and vegetables.

Sprouting

Sprouting is something very few people do, but it is another exceptional way to deliver a concentrated source of nutrition that is different from eating the plant in its mature form. To highlight this point, analyze the nutritional profile of wheat grass compared to the full-grown wheat plant, and you will get an idea of the nutrition that the sprout of a plant can deliver.

Sprouts are ideal for improving your health because they are a highly digestible source of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, beneficial enzymes, and phytochemicals. Sprouted foods have five to ten times higher B-vitamins, and twice the vitamin A, C, zinc, calcium and iron content of their non-sprouted counterparts.

Per calorie, sprouts may be arguably the most efficient form of nutrition, and they are very easy and economical to produce in your home.

Blending

Blending doesn't necessarily get you more nutrition out of your food, but it does allow you to combine more beneficial ingredients that don't otherwise go together to create an incredibly nutritious snack or meal. For example, creating a superfood smoothie can deliver a massive array of nutrients (even more than juicing) in about 5 minutes preparation time.

Blending also allows you to make incredibly nourishing and easily digestible vegetable soups, so your body can easily assimilate all the beneficial nutrients.

Out of all these practices, the most economical (for food costs, time invested, and long term storage capabilities) solution would be fermenting. To learn more and to get an easy recipe, visit The Healing Benefits of Sauerkraut. To make sure you're getting the all of the nutrition your body needs, check out .

Sources:
http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com
http://www.healingthebody.ca
http://www.healingthebody.ca
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com

About the author:
Derek Henry, B.Kin, is a highly revered holistic health coach and world renowned natural health blogger and educator who created Healing the Body to help people understand the fundamental principles to exceptional health so they can overcome their own health challenges. 



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