4 habits of cooking and eating water spinach that everyone thought was delicious and healthy turned out to be nutritious and easy to cause disease

Water spinach is a vegetable that is too familiar to Vietnamese people, this vegetable is distributed in all regions and is available all year round, but most people eat it in the summer.

Currently, there are many types of water spinach such as dry water spinach, water spinach, hydroponic water spinach, Japanese water spinach … When eating, depending on the preferences of each person, there are different choices, basically The nutritional composition of water spinach is almost the same.

TS.BS Nguyen Trong Hung (National Institute of Nutrition) said that water spinach, in addition to providing good fiber for the body, also has a relatively rich vitamin content. Specifically, according to the Institute of Nutrition’s quantification, a plate of boiled water spinach weighing 312g will provide: Energy is 78kcal; Protein 10g; Lipid 1.2g; Glucid 6.6g; Fiber 3.1g; Beta-carotene 17,463mg; Vitamin C 72mg; Calcium 312 mg; Iron 4.4mg; Sodium 116.7mg; Potassium 1031.2 mg; Zinc 1.1mg.

A plate of water spinach provides many nutrients, especially potassium and beta-carotene content. Illustration.

Through quantification of the above nutritional components, it can be seen that water spinach has a very high content of beta-carotene and potassium, which can be said to be the highest among vegetables people often use.

Although it is a commonly used vegetable, it has many culinary and nutritional values, but the preliminary processing and processing process is done by many people according to habits or according to online instructions, causing the nutritional content to be lost. deficiency, even not good for health.

– Boil vegetables with salt: TS.BS Nguyen Trong Hung said, the habit that many people make when boiling water spinach is to add salt to the pot of vegetables when boiling, the only purpose is to make the greens more eye-catching. This habit is not good for health, moreover boiling green vegetables or not depends on the technique of the housewife, not on the amount of salt added.

Adding salt to boiling vegetables will cause a lot of salt to be loaded into the body, affecting health. Illustration.

“With a plate of boiled water spinach weighing 312g, the total amount of salt available in the dish is equivalent to 291.8mg. When boiling, adding salt will make the dish stronger, then the soup won’t come out of the soup or boiled. Moreover, when eating boiled water spinach, Vietnamese people often have a habit of dipping fish sauce, this is combined with the amount of added salt from other dishes and sources that will cause the body to exceed the recommended amount of salt each day. less than 5g/day). This habit, if persisted from day to day, will have a very bad effect on the body and is a risk of causing many non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, blood pressure, kidney disease … “, Dr. Hung warned.

– Habit of losing nutrition when processing: TS.BS Tu Tu – General Secretary of the Vietnam Nutrition Association said that not only water spinach but all vegetables from the beginning of harvest have lost nutrients, especially when processing if not paying attention. The nutrients in vegetables will be lost a lot.

For water spinach, many families have the habit of boiling and opening the lid of the pan to make the vegetables greener, which is the cause of the loss of nutritional content. Or adding vegetables to the pot since the water has not boiled will also lose a lot of nutrients.

It is best to bring the water to a boil, then put the cooked vegetables into a boil, put the vegetables in the pot and then turn over once, then cover the lid. When boiling, open the lid again, then cover the pot, wait for it to cook, and then use it. The boiling process should be on high heat so that the vegetables cook faster.

Poaching vegetables before stir-frying will cause a lot of nutrients to be lost. Illustration.

– Blanch vegetables before stir-frying: When stir-frying water spinach, a lot of people have a habit of blanching the vegetables first, then taking them out to dry and then adding them to stir-fry. The purpose of this is to make the vegetables greener and softer. However, Dr. Tu Tu believes that this approach will make the good nutrients in vegetables seem to “fly away” most of the time.

“The blanching process of veg nutrients has released a lot of water and most of that water will be thrown away. Then, when sautéing vegetables at high temperature, without the lid, the vegetables once again lose nutrients. It is best to stir-fry vegetables directly, not blanch them before stir-frying,” said Dr. Tu Ngu.

– Eat rare, raw water spinach: Split water spinach is a raw material for processing many favorite dishes of many people such as making raw vegetables to eat with some types of vermicelli, making mannequins. It is undeniable that eating split water spinach will make the dish more delicious, but doing this is also the cause of many people infected with helminths.

Specifically, water spinach or vegetables grown in muddy areas are ideal habitats for large liver flukes, while dry water spinach is often infected with cat and dog fluke larvae. With vegetables contaminated with parasites, if eaten raw, the risk of infection is very high. Therefore, people should not eat raw or rare water spinach to avoid the risk of infection with parasites.