How To Prepare Healthy Foods Without Ruining Their Benefits

Just buying healthy foods isn’t enough. How you prepare them matters, too.

By Jessica Migala

While many people believe that stocking your kitchen with the right stuff — from kale to mixed nuts to a colorful assortment of veggies — is the key to a solid diet, that’s not entirely true. If you don’t prepare these foods the ideal way, you might be missing out on many of the nutrients that make them so potentially healthy. Researchers have tested a range of foods and cooking methods, from boiling to microwaving, to discover which yield the most nutritious results. Here’s your cheat sheet — don’t cook without it!

Best: Dried

Move over, sweet potato fries. A recent study looked at where the spuds fell on the glycemic index (GI), which measures how food affects your blood sugar (the lower the number, the better). The results: Sweet potatoes that had been dehydrated (a drying method that turns taters into chips) had a GI score of 41, better than when they were steamed (63), baked (64), or microwaved (66). You can buy a dehydrator online for about $40. Once your sweet potato chips are dried, add salt for flavor.

The Huffington Post