Vegetables that can be eaten raw after washing are carrots, white radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, Chinese cabbage hearts and so on. Tang said that it is best to choose pollution-free green vegetables or organic vegetables for raw food.
Vegetables produced under soilless culture conditions can also be eaten raw with confidence. The methods of eating raw include drinking homemade fresh vegetable juice, or cold mixing fresh vegetables, adding some vinegar and less salt.
Blanched vegetables are divided into the following categories: one is cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli and cauliflower. These nutritious vegetables taste better after blanching, and the rich cellulose is easier to digest. The second category is vegetables with more oxalic acid, such as spinach, bamboo shoots and water bamboo. Oxalic acid will combine with calcium in the intestine to form calcium oxalate, which interferes with the absorption of calcium by human body. Therefore, you must blanch with boiling water before cold salad to remove most oxalic acid. The third category is mustard vegetables, such as kohlrabi, which contains a substance called glucosinolate. Volatile mustard oil can be produced after hydrolysis to promote digestion and absorption. The fourth category is wild vegetables such as purslane, which can completely remove dust and insects and prevent allergies. In addition, lettuce, water chestnut and so on. It should be peeled, washed and scalded with boiling water before eating, which is more hygienic and will not affect the taste and nutrients.
Of course, not all vegetables can be used for cold salad. Potatoes, taro, yam and other vegetables containing starch must be cooked, otherwise the starch granules inside will not be broken and the human body can't digest them. Lentils contain a lot of saponins and hemagglutinin, which will cause poisoning if they are not cooked when eaten. It takes a long time to cook lentils, not a short time. You have to cook them until they change color before you can eat them safely. Bean sprouts should be fried and cooked first, even if they are cold.
Eating raw and cooked vegetables together is more beneficial to your health. For example, there are many kinds of radishes. It is better to eat raw juice with more spicy juice, but it belongs to cold food, and it is better for people with yin deficiency to eat it cooked. Some foods have different nutrients when eaten raw or cooked. For example, tomatoes contain lycopene, which can reduce the risk of prostate cancer and liver cancer. If you want to eat it, you should cook it and eat it. But if you want to take vitamin C, the effect will be better if you eat it raw, because vitamin C is easy to be lost during cooking.
However, experts warn that eating too many raw vegetables is prone to zinc deficiency, especially for the elderly. This is because many kinds of vegetables contain phytic acid, which can be decomposed after heating and cannot enter the digestive tract. However, phytic acid in raw vegetables can directly enter the intestine, affecting the absorption of trace element zinc, and frequent consumption of raw vegetables can lead to zinc deficiency in the body. Zinc deficiency can cause the dysfunction of taste and smell, and it is also the inducing factor of skin itching in the elderly, and can aggravate their forgetfulness; At the same time, eating raw vegetables with dipping sauce will increase salt intake, which may lead to an increase in blood pressure. Therefore, the elderly should not eat a lot of raw vegetables often to prevent zinc deficiency in the body.