Cooking Tips For Good Health

     Careful handling of foods during preparation and cooking helps preserve their natural vitamins and minerals. Exposure to air, long soaking or boiling in water, and cooking over high heat can remove or destroy some of the vitamins in food.

     Properly covered cookware shields food from air makes quick cooking possible by retaining the heat. Good quality cookware with snugly fitting covers seal in moisture, making it possible to use very little liquid in cooking. Even in "minimum moisture" cooking some water is used, though often it is only the moisture that clings to vegetables after they have been washed.

     Any liquid remaining in the cooking utensil after cooking should be served with the food or saved for soup stock, because it contains valuable vitamins and minerals.

     Is there any danger of ingesting dangerous chemicals from the utensils you use for cooking? No, says the Federal Food and Drug Administration. You may have heard rumors that some metals commonly used in cookware are not safe. However, the FDA reports that is knows of no commonly used cooking material that is unsuitable for preparing food. In other words the FDA considers such materials as aluminum, copper, glass, steel, tin and others to be safe in ordinary cooking use.