Knowledge Base › Deb Kennedy, PhD - Culinary Medicine: A Focus on Vegetables

Many recipes call for sautéed vegetables. I’m grateful to see that instructions now often suggest sautéing in water instead of oil. I prefer to steam them. Am I losing nutritional value and/or flavor?

Culinary Medicine: A Focus on Vegetables

Deb Kennedy, PhD - Culinary Medicine: A Focus on Vegetables

Recorded

This event was on August 1, 2024

Join Dr. Deb for this engaging session where she takes vegetables from the clinic to your plate. She delves into the heart of culinary medicine, focusing on the vital role vegetables play in our diets. Participants will learn how to harness the nutritional benefits of vegetables, from understanding their therapeutic properties to skillfully incorporating them into daily meals. The event features a cooking demonstration, where Dr. Kennedy will showcase innovative ways to incorporate more vegetables into everyday eating, emphasizing the seamless blend of flavor and nutrition, plus there will be plenty of time to ask questions. This event promises to be a cornerstone for anyone looking to deepen their connection with food as a form of medicine.

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Question

Laurie Wallace

Many recipes call for sautéed vegetables. I’m grateful to see that instructions now often suggest sautéing in water instead of oil. I prefer to steam them. Am I losing nutritional value and/or flavor?

Answer

So what we're talking about is steaming briefly. So last night I made some broccoli. I had, I chopped them up into bite-sized pieces and I put a tiny bit of water in the bottom of a saute pan, uh, not even a quarter of an inch. Um, and I started just saw, um, cooking them in that little bit of steam and then I threw out that water and then added, uh, some toasted sesame oil and soy sauce. And that way I briefly steamed them. So you're not going to lose a lot of nutrients when you briefly steam something. You're gonna lose nutrients from high heat. You're gonna lose nutrients from cooking too long and you're gonna lose nutrients if you cook in submerged in water. So boiling, you're gonna lose the most unless actually the vegetables are boiling in a super as stew and then you're consuming that liquid. You didn't lose 'em, they just went, went a different place. Then you ate them from a different place. Um, so time temperature and you don't submerge them in water. So no, I think you're really good to go. Um, that broccoli was amazing. My kid even ate them.

Deb Kennedy, PhD

PhD Nutritionist

drdebkennedy.com

*Deb Kennedy, PhD* nutritionist, chef and Value-Based Medicine certified, is dedicated to helping people improve their health through food. She received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Tufts University, and previously held roles with Tufts Human Nutrition Research Center for Aging, Yale’s Prevention Research Center, Babies and Children’s Hospital at New York Presbyterian, Cornell University, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. She also held the position of first Chair for Best Practices at the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (CIA) and was an instructor in Culinary Nutrition at the New England Culinary Institute. A pioneer in the growing field of culinary medicine, and self-proclaimed food warrior, Dr. Kennedy is the author of multiple books, including The Culinary Medicine Textbook, a five-volume publication to date that uses her research in food, flavor, eating and nutrition to lay out the concepts and fundamental topics needed to master culinary medicine. For the last several years, Deb, along with 40 nutritionists and a dozen chefs from around the world, created culinary competencies for nutrition recommendations. She has developed the Food Coach Academy based on this work, which is delivered in a science-based modular format that provides individuals with expertise needed to use the power of food to transform health.