Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host Leah Higl and this is episode 177 where we are going to be talking about how nutrition changes pre slash post cooking. This was a request from a listener and I heard the request and I’m like, can I make this interesting? I don’t know. Let me know if I make this interesting. Let me know if I make this interesting. Give me feedback, me a DM. But we’ll be talking about things like changes in micronutrients, absorption and changes in overall weight slash volume of food in relation to their nutrition profile.
We obviously can’t cover everything since that’s too much for a podcast. One of the things I’m hesitant on is will we cover too little? We’ll see how goes. But it could be interesting stuff there. I don’t know. But we are also assuming that you have common sense as well. So we’re not going to spend any time talking about food safety and bacteria. So please don’t come at me for not covering that. I assume you’re relatively switched on, right? Let’s get into it.
Leah:
Yeah, like things that need to be cooked. Obviously cooking is good for chicken. But I think a good place to start that this particular topic is probably going to feel a little bit detached from the next things we’re going to talk about, which is why we’re going to get it over and done with and out of the way. But it’s looking at cooked versus raw weights.
This is mostly applicable to people who are kind of tracking or measuring their food intake because like having this understanding is helpful in that process. But obviously weights of foods will change when they’re cooked versus the raw product. How they change is going to depend on the cooking method, the duration of cooking and the temperature of which something is cooked. Which is why the raw weight of foods is considered the most accurate approach if we’re kind of generally calorie tracking or doing anything along those lines, because there is less variability in the raw product than it is the cooked product.
So when things are raw, like the calories and macros remain consistent across the board. And then cooking is going to obviously alter the weight, but the total calories stay the same. If you are wanting a general guide on how things, gram-wise, convert from being raw to cooked, a good way to think about it is cooked meat is roughly 25 to 30% lighter than raw. So obviously 100 grams of cooked chicken versus 100 grams of uncooked chicken, they are going to be different calories and macro totals. But if we compare 100 grams of raw chicken to 70 grams of cooked chicken, that’s going to be more comparable because we’ve lost a lot of that water weight, for example.
Cooked pasta and rice, that’s typically going to be two to three times heavier than raw because it’s soaking up all the water. And then potatoes typically lose 15 to 20% when cooked, but that’s specifically talking about baked or roasted. When they are boiled and absorb water, they actually increase in weight but they’re kind of some general guidelines of how foods can change being from raw to cooked.
Aidan:
I get a surprising amount of questions on stuff like that and comments as well.
Leah:
Do you really?
Aidan:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Like I was just thinking about that in relation to content creation being like, is this useful for people? I don’t know. It’s one of those things that I get a lot of questions when like, would it be interesting content? I don’t know. But I also get a lot of very confident comments from like, if I post one of those, like what does 30 grams of protein look like and then the post will specify how much chicken breast it is.
I will get a lot of comments by being like, well, 100 grams of chicken breast is 31 grams of protein. So this can’t be right. Because I’ve been a higher number because I’ve used raw weight.
Leah:
Raw versus cooked.
Aidan:
It’s clearly specified. Very confidently wrong comments.
Leah:
I guess I’m just always flabbergasted when people don’t understand that. But I guess again, I’m in such a bubble. I’ve for so many years that I have like obviously a very good understanding of this. But I think if you are get like new to tracking calories or measuring food, having the understanding that raw versus cooked weight of foods is gonna, they’re gonna be a discrepancy. Helpful. And it’s worth going and finding the specific data you need and whatever tracking app you’re using.
Aidan:
Yeah, for sure. And also like as an interesting thing, the lens through which I create content on is I view the people consuming my content as intelligent people.
Leah:
Agreed.
Aidan:
And then I view my job to be like, how simple can I make this content to make it easy to understand? And I tried not to make it simple by quote on quote dumbing it down. It’s like when I read business content, I’m like, I think I’m relatively decent intelligence, but I’d love it to be as simple as possible. Cause that way I learn I can learn as quickly as possible as simple as it is. So that’s how I try to create content for what it’s worth. If anyone is interested.
The next thing I hope might be a little bit more interesting, but we’re talking about loss of nutrients. So everyone listening probably knows that some nutrients are lost when cooking, particularly water-soluble vitamins like vitamin C and vitamin B when they are exposed to heat or the B vitamins I should be clearer. The temperature and cooking method matters though. Where I’m trying to make this a little bit more interesting is by talking about specific numbers because I think a lot of people would know that happens, but context kind of matters. If it destroyed the vitamin content by like 1%, we don’t care. If it was 90%, that’s a pretty big deal.
So let’s now talk through numbers and specific cooking methods. So research looking at boiling has found using specific foods, found that broccoli, spinach and lettuce lose 50% or more of their vitamin C content. Some will be lost in the water, but a lot is also lost to heat as well. Like you often hear people talking about if you retain the water, you can then drink that, seems a bit weird. It seems a bit weird to me, but you can drink that and you’ll get the vitamins still, but some is also lost to the heat. It’s not just in the water.
Microwaving reduced it by 20 to 30%. I personally found that just as an interesting one, because like I wouldn’t have had context in that before reading that. Steaming it, everyone’s kind of heard this that steaming it reduces it less, partly because it’s also not in water. So steaming it reduces it by seven to 10%. So that’s a big, big difference to the 50% or more that happens when it’s in boiling water.
And moving to a different food, this isn’t something I think many people would be super familiar with, but I’ve researched looking at Omega 3 content of seafood found that baking led to minimal losses, but frying led to like a 70 to 85% loss. I believe all of these studies are referenced in the show notes.
Yeah, they are. So if you want to read any of these studies, go for it. How you cook things in a temperature which they’re cooked at influences the potential loss of nutrients. So I think it’s just cool to have context.
Leah:
Yeah, I mean, I generally, guess personally, thinking about my own nutrition, don’t think about this stuff too much.
Aidan:
We’ll talk about that.
Aidan:
Yeah. But yeah, it’s worth knowing about. I think it’s interesting. The next thing we’ll touch on is general nutrient absorption from raw to cooked foods. In terms of increased stuff. In terms of, yeah. So generally we see an increase in nutrient absorption, less so than a decrease.
So a few examples, eggs are well known for having a higher protein digestibility when cooked. I don’t know who is out there eating raw eggs still, but that’d be-
Aidan:
Rocky.
Leah:
Rocky, my goshes. Hopefully we’re eating our eggs cooked. feel like that’s nicer anyway. One study found a 180% increase in digestibility, but regardless of that actual number, it is a consistent increase across the board there. The absorption of another really good example is beta carotene. So even beta carotene in carrots is the absorption of that is actually higher after cooking. One specific study found a 6.5 times increase. So pretty substantial in that kind of general bioavailability of that there. Another example, tomatoes sautéed in olive oil led to an 80% increase in lycopene being absorbed.
Another example, tomatoes sautéed in olive oil led to an 80% increase in lycopene being absorbed. This is likely due to a combo of the cooking, breaking down cell walls to make the lycopene more bioavailable and the fact that it is fat soluble. So the olive oil would have been potentially helpful there in regards to absorption. And honestly, like there is a pretty long exhaustive list of these like very interesting changes that can happen when you cook foods, including just a lot of plant based foods where the bioavailability of many micronutrients is improved through the cooking process.
Aidan:
And all of those things like when I heard when I got this question, I was like, I’ll create a podcast on it. I was kind of like, well, maybe I can just like go through these individual things and find interesting things. But it is just a long list of like percentages. And it comes back to what you were saying earlier. We don’t think this matters. We don’t pay attention to this.
The short version is, I just don’t think it’s that deep. You can solve all of this, all of this micronutrient related stuff and absorption and all of these things, simply by doing a bit of both. Have some food cooked, have some food raw, particularly in the case of like fruit and veg, to having a mix of both of these things. And it gives the best of both worlds. I wouldn’t try to optimise this stuff because the deeper you go of all of this stuff, the easier it is to see. Just do a variety of things and it’s going to balance out.
Leah:
Yeah and I would much rather, particularly from a fruit and veg perspective for my clients to eat in a way that they enjoy consuming these things and have more fruits and vegetables than add this like extra barrier of like you need to have it in a specific way to optimise nutrition I feel like that’s missing the point.
Aidan:
100%. Well, this has been episode 177 of the Ideal Nutrition podcast. As always, if you have not already, if you could please leave a positive rating and review, we would massively appreciate it.