Common sense of vitamin C you need to know

Speaking of vitamin C, everyone is not unfamiliar. It is one of the important antioxidant nutrients necessary for the human body. It not only promotes the absorption of calcium, iron, and folic acid, but also accelerates the synthesis of collagen. It also plays a role in improving human immunity and anti-infection ability. play an important role.

In their daily diet, many "health experts" pay great attention to the supplementation of vitamin C, and often eat some vegetables rich in vitamin C for three meals a day. But you know what? Vitamin C is the most "squeamish" vitamin when cooking vegetables. If you use inappropriate cooking methods, it is likely to cause a lot of loss!

Behaviors that cause vitamin C loss

1. Rinse repeatedly, cut vegetables too finely

In order to ensure hygiene when cooking, many people often wash the cut vegetables repeatedly, but they don't know that the vitamin C in the vegetables is already lost from the beginning of cutting and washing the vegetables.

After cutting the vegetables with a knife, some cells are broken, and the vitamin C inside will be oxidized when exposed to the air. If the vegetables are too chopped and exposed to the air for a long time, the oxidation loss of vitamin C will be faster.

And vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin, when it comes into contact with water, it will be lost from the incision with the water. Therefore, it is not advisable to rinse repeatedly after cutting vegetables, and it is not advisable to soak them for a long time, which may lead to the loss of more than 20% of vitamin C.

Suggestion: Wash the vegetables before cutting them, try to drain the water before cutting them, cook them immediately after cutting, and try to keep the vegetables intact when blanching.

2. Vegetable juice for consumption

Many people are used to supplementing vitamin C with vegetable juice, but they do not know that this will cause a large loss of vitamin C!

In the process of juicing, the cell wall of the vegetable is chopped up, and the vitamin C and oxidase in it are combined together, and together with the action of oxygen, it is easily oxidized. Moreover, after juicing, oxidase will continue to oxidize vitamin C in vegetable juice. The longer it is placed, the more vitamin C is lost, and the loss can even reach more than 80%.

Suggestion: Vitamin C is more stable under acidic conditions. If you want to juice and eat, you can choose acidic vegetables such as tomatoes; heating can make oxidase ineffective, so you can also quickly blanch the vegetables before juicing, and keep as much as possible of vitamin C.

3. Add lots of salt when cooking

Adding table salt during cooking will form a hypertonic solution, so that vitamin C in the cells is leached out and fully contacted with oxidase, which is more prone to oxidation. And the more salt you add, the greater the loss of vitamin C in vegetables.

Suggestion: Add less salt when cooking, and add more salt when it is out of the pot; onion, ginger, and garlic have strong antioxidant properties, so you can add some when cooking to help delay and reduce the loss of vitamin C.

Some misunderstandings about vitamin C tablets

Nowadays, vitamin C supplementation has become a common way for everyone to improve their immunity. Many people even think that vitamin C is a "universal supplement", and they start taking vitamin C when they feel uncomfortable. But is the effect of vitamin C really so magical? Is it better to eat more vitamin C? How should we supplement vitamin C?

1. Is vitamin C a "quick-acting drug" for reducing fever and relieving cough?

Some people have a cold and fever. After taking vitamin C, the symptoms are indeed relieved, and the course of the disease is shortened, so they think that vitamin C can treat colds and coughs.

But experts say that vitamin C itself has no effect on preventing or treating colds. Only for people who lack vitamin C, supplementing vitamin C when they have a cold can help improve immunity, relieve symptoms, and shorten the course of the disease to a certain extent;

2. The more vitamin C you eat, the more you absorb?

Vitamin C can enhance the phagocytosis of bacteria by leukocytes and help improve immunity, but its main role is to synthesize collagen. Once vitamin C is deficient, vascular collagen will be insufficient, and the vascular fragility will increase, and it will be easy to bleed, ranging from skin bruising to gastrointestinal bleeding.

Therefore, it is necessary to ensure adequate intake of vitamin C. Healthy adults should consume 100 mg of vitamin C per day, with a maximum intake of 2000 mg.