Nutrition is a very important factor for health and well-being; eating badly affects not only the body, but also the mind and emotions.
All levels of man are interconnected, and the imbalance of one of them inevitably affects the others.
For this reason, choosing the most suitable cooking method to eat healthily is an essential choice for those who want to take care of themselves and those around them.
Let's see the pros and cons of baking.
Baking
Baking means to use the hot air circulation to bring food to certain chemical and physical modifications . In all the houses there is an oven: from food warming ovens to ovens with many combined functions.
The very first oven is the wood-fired one, present in the stoves that also served as stove; subsequently and for a long time the most widespread oven was the gas oven, which exploited the presence of flames fed by methane gas, present in the lower part of the oven, to heat the oven chamber above and thus allow it to cook.
Then the electric oven was introduced, and gradually other options were added: the combi oven, the ventilated oven, up to the microwave oven, which uses a different principle for cooking food, that is to say to act on the mobility of the molecules of the food to generate energy and then cook .
Discover also the pros and cons of cooking with a pressure cooker
Pros and cons of baking
Baking is recommended, following certain precautions, for any food .
In the oven, the temperature rises quickly and reaches the food from the outside towards the inside. This produces slightly different cooking speeds between the inside and the outside : the crust will usually be more crispy while the inside will maintain a certain humidity and softness.
The pros of baking are above all the flavor : baking can make recipes with less added fat, enhancing the flavor with the formation of the external crust. Baking in the oven also allows, however, to prevent the outside from getting roasted : just use a glass dish with a lid or a bag.
The pros of baking also concern the speed and energy impressed during cooking. According to macrobiotics baking is the most yang and energizing, able to heat the food and those who consume it. For this reason the use of the oven is particularly appreciated and indicated in the winter period.
To optimize the use of the oven it is necessary to heat the oven before introducing the food, and once the surface is cooked, lower the temperature to about 140 degrees and thus maintain a longer but healthier cooking.
The temperatures reached by the oven can be very high, and can therefore alter the bioavailability of the nutrients present in the food . While the lack of water makes it possible to keep the water-soluble nutrients intact, on the other hand the high temperature can destroy vitamins and mineral salts.
For this reason baking in the oven must respect the right times and temperatures for each food, avoiding as much as possible, to be healthy, the formation of external crusts.
