Broccoli Raw or Cooked

Broccoli Baby

What a staple item to have in your fridge.  Broccoli is AMAZING! You can pair it with multiple dishes or just eat it by itself. All it takes is 15 minutes and some salt, pepper, garlic powder and butter for seasoning and you have a great side dish for dinner. Or you can eat it raw with some ranch dressing for a snack. Broccoli is loaded with great nutritional properties.

What's New and Beneficial About Broccoli

Broccoli can provide cholesterol-lowering benefits if you cook it by steaming. The fiber-related components in broccoli do a better job of binding together with bile acids in your digestive tract when they've been steamed. When this binding process takes place, it's easier for bile acids to be excreted, and the result is a lowering of your cholesterol levels. Raw broccoli still has cholesterol-lowering ability—just not as much.

Broccoli has a strong, positive impact on our body's detoxification system, and researchers have recently identified one of the key reasons for this detox benefit. Glucoraphanin, gluconasturtiian, and glucobrassicin are 3 glucosinolate phytonutrients found in a special combination in broccoli.

The Catch?

Awhile back I had a discussion with one of my best friends on the way to the super market.  We wanted to figure out which is more nutritious, raw broccoli or frozen broccoli.  My first thought was that fresh broccoli is better because its not processed.  But then I remembered that like any fresh produce, the nutrition found inside like antioxidants, start to deteriorate over time.... but when the produce is frozen right after its gathered from the farm, the natural oxidation process of organic compounds found in food can be significantly delayed.  So basically if you freeze the broccoli right after you take it out of the ground, you'll preserve the nutritional value better than letting it sit in a store for a week in its raw form. 

Well I thought I solved the problem, I was going to buy frozen broccoli until I die because it had more nutrition..... And then like most things I research, I continued to read more research, and I began to look up things about cooking veggies and how exactly does the frozen produce production process works.  And what I found out didn't change my purchasing of frozen broccoli but it did change how I would cook it!!!  

If you don't want to read further you can click the link to the right Cooking strategy for Broccoli  .  This will take you to a short 2 minute video explaining how mustard powder reacts with specific enzymes that convert all the good phytonutrients found in broccoli to their active forms.  In the frozen broccoli process, after the broccoli is picked the farmer will flash heat and freeze vegetable.  This flash heat turns off the necessary enzymes that convert the phytonutrients found in broccoli to there active states.  However, a trick has