What impact will various cooking methods have on the quality of the macro nutrients or micro nutrients?
Cooking has little effect on the macro nutrients (except that excessive heat can damage and cross link macro nutrients). However, with regard to micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals) cooking can have a significant negative effect. Vitamins are extraordinarily sensitive to heat. And minerals can be leached out of food when cooking with water. Therefore steaming vegetables is an ideal preparation method to retain micro nutrients and yet make the vegetables more digestible.
