Effects of Heat on Nutritional Quality of (Indian) Spices

[Guest guest]

Taken from: http://www.whfoods.org.

 

Interesting article and pertains more to the Indian (and Asian) cooking practices.

 

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Should spices such as turmeric, coriander (or others) be included while cooking or added afterwards? How does heat affect the nutritional quality of spices?

 

 

In many traditional Indian and Asian cuisines, spices found in the form of a seed (for example, coriander seed, mustard seed, peppercorn, or cumin seed) are often added to cooking oils at the start of the heating process and allowed to " pop " in the oil. Powdered spices are added at different points in the cooking process, but never following all cooking steps.

We have only been able to find one research article (not published in MEDLINE) that measured nutritional changes in cooked versus uncooked turmeric. Although it shows improved antioxidant ability from cooking, we would not necessarily expect this finding to be typical. We've seen research, for example, on turmerin, one of the water-soluble peptides in turmeric that has demonstrated antioxidant ability. We would assume that a certain percentage of turmerin could be lost in the same way as other water-soluble nutrients.

We would expect there to be trade-offs between cooked versus uncooked spices. These trade-offs might be unique to each particular spice. In general, we would expect there to be relatively less nutrient loss from dried spices than from fresh spices, since the drying process (and the time involved with drying) would have already taken its toll on the spice. In other words, once the spice has been dried (or dried and ground into a powder), the additional loss from heating might not be nearly as great as the original loss when the fresh plant was converted to its dried or powdered stage. Cooking may also reduce the nutrient content of fresh spices, like fresh ginger.

This rule would not apply, of course, to the use of whole seed spices. The same approach we take to raw versus roasted nuts and seeds would seem appropriate here; we like the trade-off between minimal heat, short-term heating of nuts and seeds to bring out flavor, versus some nutrient loss.

[sherlin10]

Thanks buddy! I understand quality of spices is important for quality food and nutrition. But how can we check spices quality? Can you tell me that spices provided by evergreenexports are quality spices?