Which cooking practice reduces vitamins lost during cooking?

• A. Use frozen vegetables (frozen soon after picking)
• B. Use a sharp knife
• C. Boil with minimum water
• D. Have the water boiling before foods are added

Answer: (C)

Vitamins, especially water-soluble ones like vitamin C and several B vitamins, can be lost when vegetables are cooked in water because they dissolve into that cooking liquid. Boiling with the smallest amount of water creates less liquid for those vitamins to leach into, so more of them stay in the vegetables themselves. If you then discard the cooking water, you’re losing any vitamins that did move into it, so using minimal water helps minimize overall losses. The other options don’t target this key idea as directly: a sharp knife doesn’t affect vitamin retention, using frozen vegetables helps preserve nutrients before cooking but doesn’t reduce losses during cooking itself, and starting with boiling water isn’t as reliable for limiting vitamin loss as using very little water.