Food is essential to the growth and development of the human body. It is through it that our body gets the needed nutrients for a healthy lifestyle.
But do you know that the food you eat can be harming your body? Yes, day in day out we unknowingly feed the body with toxic due to some elementary cooking mistakes. How long we cook the food, the cooking oil we use, and seasonings among others, can be a poison in disguise.
It is, therefore, imperative to know how to cook the healthy way by avoiding some common mistakes. In this piece, we will learn about 6 ways you may be making your food toxic without even knowing.
- The Cookware you use
Let’s start with one of the basic tools for cooking; the cookware. The cookware you use for cooking can cause you more harm than good. The materials used in producing some of the cookware on the market today releases toxic when exposed to fire for a longer time. Until 2013 Teflon, used a nonstick coating that contained traces of a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that caused cancer. The chemical causes a reaction when overheated and releases toxic. So imagine what happens when you consume food prepared in such cookware. So you always have to choose the best non toxic cookware for your kitchen.
- Overheating cooking oils
You may choose a healthy oil for your cooking. But do you know that overheating it can make it toxic? If the oil is heated above its smoke point it can become toxic, and that can be dangerous to the human body. Some healthy cooking oils like olive is very safe but can withstand 200 degree Celsius of heating, and anything above that point makes it unsafe. If for a particular reason you want to heat your cooking oil at an extreme temperature, then choose the right oil. Palm and sunflower oil has smoke points above 230 degree Celsius.
We all enjoy fried food unless otherwise by the doctor’s advice. However, you should be mindful that it is an open secret that fried food can be toxic. The toxicity of fried foods come in varied forms. When you excessively fry your food, it loses all its nutrients and makes it unhealthy. Secondly, when the oil you are using is not healthy, it also makes the food unhealthy and causes disease. Lastly, some people are fond of using the same oil for frying different foods. Once you use the same oil over and over again and it changes color, and it becomes toxic too.
- Overuse of Seasonings
We sometimes use seasonings and dressings to make our food look sumptuous and have good flavor. But behind this is the dark side of unhealthiness. Excess use of seasoning and dressings can be harmful. Most of the dressings including mayonnaise contain a high amount of sodium that can cause high water retention.
- Adding salt to already cooked food
Adding salt to already cooked food is a common mistake we do in the kitchen. Sometimes, after cooking, we realize that there is little or no salt in the food. To experience the taste of salt, we are tempted to add more salt to the already cooked food. However, this practice is very dangerous and when continued for a long time, it can cause serious health problems like heart and kidney diseases.
Some food items like vegetable require no or little cooking. Overcooking your vegetables makes it lose all its nutrients. When this happens, it removes the main benefit of eating it at all.
Let’s eat to live instead of living to eat. Paying a little attention to your cooking can save your life and promote a good life.