Which is more nutritious – A raw carrot or a cooked one? What about tomatoes? Mushrooms? Cabbage?

If you answered raw to all of the above, you may be in for a surprise. According to the Scientific American, the answer is not so simple. It turns out that some nutrients are actually more available to the body when the veggie is heated.

The most popular example is lycopene, an antioxidant found in the red pigments of tomatoes. Lycopene levels in tomatoes rose 35% after being cooked for 30 minutes at 190 degrees farenheit. Why? Probably because the heat breaks down the thick cell walls of the vegetable, releasing the nutrient that was bound to the wall.

Other nutrients, of course, suffer from heat. The best example is vitamin C, which seems to evaporate from just about anything from the moment its harvested. Luckily, vitamin C is so abundant in fruits, vegetables, and in fortified foods and drinks, that people rarely form a deficiency.

Frying is another story. The high temperature of the oil creates oxidized oil molecules – free radicals – which can then damage cells in our body by intermingling with tem. That’s why everyone is talking day and night about anti-oxidants that recapture the rebelling radicals and prevent them from messing with our cells.

Bottom Line: there’s no clear cut winner. Almost all forms of vegetables are good for you.

What to do at the supermarket:

This is one part of your grocery shopping where you can have your cake and eat it too. There are an infinite number of ways to prepare vegetables and fruits for consumption. Raw, cooked, chopped, diced, juiced, baked, mixed, frozen. Just get more into your diet.

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Three months after scores of young women across the country began to fall ill with a particularly nasty strain of e-coli, Federal health officials manged to piece together the puzzle and discover that the root is Nestle’s refrigerated cookie dough products, eaten raw.

Nestle issued a recall yesterday, but managed to confuse more than elucidate. On the one hand Nestle is asking people to return products to the store, but on the other hand it says that as long as you bake the product it should be safe. What’s a consumer to do?

The FDA is more clear cut in its instructions: Cooking the dough is not recommended because consumers might get the bacteria on their hands and on other cooking surfaces.

Meanwhile, consumer groups are calling for improved food safety measures by the FDA, so that these contaminations are discovered before people get sick. Nestle is actually known for stringent safety protocols, so it will be interesting to see what else it could have done to prevent this recall.

What you need to know:

The contaminant casuing the problem is E. coli O157:H7. It causes abdominal cramping, vomiting and a diarrheal illness, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week. Young children and the elderly are at highest risk for developing HUS, which can lead to serious kidney damage and even death.

What to do at the supermarket:

Folks, you knwo the drill. Remember the recall is just for cookie dough, although if past behavior is any indicator, sales all  Tool House cookies are going to slump in the next few weeks.

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