There are many questions, speculations about the different cooking methods, and the best way to cook and eat your food. Some, in fact, represent a health risk (sometimes even carcinogenic), while others would have all the virtues, by preserving as much as possible the vitamins and trace elements present in these foods. This is why it is important to be well informed in order to know how to cook healthily.

Between steam cooking, barbecue, frying pan, wok… Is there a real difference? The answer is yes. And between the different cooking methods, the consequences are not the same depending on the type of food.

As for vegetables, which are full of vitamins and trace elements, it is important to choose a cooking method capable of preserving their benefits.

For meat and fish, you have to be careful about the cooking temperature. Too high a temperature of cooking fats risks denaturing them and causing them to lose their nutritional qualities.

Once the cooking method has been found, there remains the question of using the right oil, because not all oils can withstand the same temperatures.

Which cooking methods to choose for which types of food? Is there really a better cooking oil than the others? The wok is trendy, but is it really a healthy ally? The answers to all these questions, in this article written with Pr David Khayat, oncologist, and Dr Laurence Plumey, nutritionist.

To discover: 05 rules for a healthy and balanced diet

Which cooking for which food?
1 – Raw To begin with, remember that the best way to consume vegetables is simply not to heat them, to eat them raw! Because it is the best way for all the vitamins, trace elements, and antioxidants to be preserved.

But when eating raw… naturally, the problem of pesticides and health safety arises.

You should know that many pesticides are not water-soluble, that is to say, they do not go to water. To remove the pesticide residue on a fruit or vegetable, it must be washed with soapy water, not foamy, but with a very small amount of soap, because pesticides are generally fat-soluble, and soap contains fat. Then just rinse with water to remove the soap taste. Otherwise there is always the solution to peel your fruits and vegetables! Another alternative is to eat organic or products from sustainable agriculture (with a minimum of pesticides).

2 – Steaming But let’s get to the heart of the matter: cooking.

According to Dr. Laurence Plumey, nutritionist, the best method of cooking is unquestionably steaming, because it best preserves vitamins, minerals and trace elements. These remain in the food and are protected there. In addition, respecting a controlled cooking time often allows cooking, called al dente, which limits vitamin losses. Thus, with steam cooking, there may be only 15 to 20% vitamin loss where there will be twice as much with more aggressive cooking.

3 – Cooking in a frying pan or in the oven As for cooking in the oven or in a frying pan, they are equivalent in terms of heat. However, Dr. Laurence Plumey insists on some essential advice:

Do not use just any oil for cooking; olive oil and sunflower oil tolerate high temperatures very well (over 180°C); on the other hand, rapeseed and walnut oil, rich in fragile omega 3, cannot be cooked!

As for cooking with butter, be careful; above 140°C, it darkens and gives rise to components that irritate the gastric mucosa; by mixing butter and oil, we do not have this phenomenon.

And as for the cream, it turns very quickly and must be added only at the end of cooking.

Fried foods give products that are obviously fatty (in proportion to the exposed surface: fries with 15% fat and crisps with 30% fat) and depleted in vitamins.

4 – Cooking on the barbecue, on the grill, over flames Cooking on the barbecue is cooking which, when it exposes the food to the flame, causes the appearance of charred parts made up of polycyclic hydrocarbons and aromatic amines, that is to say, the same elements that can be found in tobacco and which are carcinogenic, indicates Professor David Khayat, oncologist.

So be careful not to put meat, fish or vegetables in contact with flames. It is necessary to cook with descending embers, once the flames extinguish themselves and that the brazier declines. If despite everything, parts of meat or fish have been charred, do not eat them.

5 – Wok cooking > The opinion of Pr David Khayat, oncologist:

Wok cooking can be beneficial, or it can be bad, because these foods are often cooked for too long, at too high a temperature.

Today, when we cook with a wok, we work on a large fire which diffuses a very high temperature. In addition, we cook our food for 10 to 15 minutes in the wok, and we even cook the rice in it.

You should also know that originally, the farmers who used it, lived in poorly insulated habitats, so the air circulated and the smoke could escape. Today, when you do that in your apartment, everything is isolated. So all the polycyclic hydrocarbons that will be produced will be breathed in.

When you cook with a flat frying pan, you add fat, then your food, all of this has been studied in a laboratory and certified with a bailiff, the temperature rises to around 150 degrees C. Whereas when you do the same operation in a wok the temperature will rise to 350 degrees C. The difference is, that at this temperature, any fat, whatever it is, will exceed, what is called, the smoke point. From this temperature, the fat will become frothy, blackish and black smoke will escape from this oil – the molecules formed are irritating and potentially carcinogenic when this type of cooking is repeated and regular.