Surprising ways to get the most nutrients out of your food

1. Eat Raw Tomatoes AND Cooked Tomatoes
Lycopene — a carotenoid antioxidant is what gives fruits and vegetables like tomatoes it’s red color.
Lycopene is a strong antioxidant and research has even showed it may significantly reduce your stroke risk and cancer.
Lycopene becomes more bioavailable when it's cooked. Eat Salsa, Tomato sauce and soup.
Buy jarred sauces / salsas and boxed soups to avoid aluminum packaging because can liners tend to contain potent estrogen mimics such as bisphenol A (BPA), which is a toxic endocrine-disrupting chemical.
2. Tear lettuce before storing.
When lettuce leaves are torn, a boost of protective phytonutrients are produced.
As long as you eat the lettuce within a couple of days, you'll be able to take advantage of this extra phytonutrient content in the torn lettuce.
3. Don’t Boil Vegetables
Boiling allows the nutrients to leach out into the water, which is then thrown out. While this isn't as much of an issue if you're making soup, where you'll be consuming the water along with the nutrients, if you're looking to prepare a vegetable only, you're better off steaming or lightly sautéing.
4. Do not eat Fat-Free (unless it is naturally without fat)
When fat is removed from a food product, it's usually replaced by sugar/fructose in order to taste good, and this is a recipe for poor health. Excess fructose in your diet drives insulin and leptin resistance, which are at the heart of not only diabetes but most other chronic diseases as well.
Further, some nutrients and antioxidants are fat-soluble, which means you must eat them with fat to properly absorb them. (Eat healthy fats to assist with nutrient absorption such as coconut oil, avocado, whole eggs etc.
5. Let Crushed Garlic Rest Before Cooking With It
Crushing garlic causes a chemical reaction that produces Allicin, which neutralizes free radicals faster than any other known compound—it's almost instantaneous when the two molecules meet. However, the Allicin is quickly deactivated by heat. Just two minutes on the stovetop or one minute in the microwave will basically eliminate any useful allicin from the garlic.
However, if you let chopped garlic sit for 10 minutes before exposing it to heat, the enzyme that creates allicin will have time to finish working, and your finished dish should have a much higher allicin content. Keep in mind that allicin is short-lived, lasting less than an hour. So once you've crushed your garlic and let it rest, try to consume it as quickly as possible.
6. Don’t Throw Away the Most Nutritious Parts of the Vegetable
Peels from carrots, apples and even watermelon rinds contain the most concentrated sources of nutrients. So before you throw away that scallion green or beet greens, think about adding to your favorite recipe or blending into a smoothie to get the most out of your food.
7. Buying Broccoli Florets Instead of a Whole Head
Broccoli is one of the healthiest, cancer-fighting veggies you can eat. But it also can lose 75 percent of its flavonoids and 80 percent of its beneficial glucosinolates just 10 days after harvest. When the broccoli was cut into florets, the rate of antioxidant loss doubled, so choose fresh, locally grown broccoli in whole-head form for maximum nutrition.
8. Let Cooked Beans Sit
As with other boiled veggies, beans can loose much of their nutrients in the cooking water. One trick is to let the beans sit in the liquid for about an hour after cooking to help them reabsorb some of the lost nutrients.
9. Choose Local, Organic When Possible

*Article adapted from article found at:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/07/01/common-habits-making-vegetables-less-nutritious.aspx?e_cid=20150701Z1_DNL_art_3&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art3&utm_campaign=20150701Z1&et_cid=DM78391&et_rid=1015020511