Arthritis Care Gateshead

1. Adding salt to the water will make beans tough, it just isn't true, acidic ingredients such as tomatoes will react with compounds in the skins of beans and make them tough. The only effect of adding salt to the water is to make the beans cook faster. So salt your beans whenever you want with no fear of tough consequences.
   
   

2. Washing mushrooms in water will cause them to absorb a lot of water. Not true, mushrooms will absorb as much water as cauliflower when washed, no one ever told you not to wash cauliflower in water, wash mushrooms before use. (A mushroom is about 79.73591% water to start with.)
   
   

3. Spinach has more iron than other flat leaf plants; no it has the same amount as other flat leaf plants. A German scientist put the decimal point in the wrong place, starting a popular myth.
   
   

4. Searing meat before cooking seals in the juices, oh no it doesn't, it produces a better flavour by caramelising (See Sugar.) the outside. Experiments have shown that none-seared meat weighs more after cooking than seared meat. (So the seared meat lost more juice!)
   
   

5. Some foods have no calories. - This may well be true in that it takes more energy for the body to process these foods than the food provides. However these foods usually have no nutritional value either so you can't live on them. (This means if you only eat zero cal food you will starve to death.)
   
   

6. Drink five glasses of water a day. Advice from the American Food Agency went on to say that you get three of these from normal food and drink you consume during an average day.
   
   


7. Sugar: caramelisation is the chemical reaction that occurs when sugar (any type) is heated to the point where it's molecules start to break down. So sugar is the only food that can be caramelised, right.
   
   

8. Boiling vegetables destroys all their nutrients; my Gran knew this. But she wouldn't have said that if she had a modern chemistry laboratory. While some vitamins will leach into the water and be lost when the water is discarded, most of the nutrients (minerals, carbohydrates, fats, proteins) are unaffected by boiling. Modern food science knows that some vegetables are actually better for us when they are cooked. The amount of lycopene in tomatoes and the amount of beta-carotene in carrots both increase with cooking. Cooking also neutralizes some of the bitter alkaloids that some plants produce as a defence against being eaten. The best way to cooking vegetables for best nutrition is to microwave them then in descending order, steaming and boiling.
   
   

   OK there are only eight!